


Odd Pieces

by tinseltown



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4246308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinseltown/pseuds/tinseltown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a skinny, weak boy who doesn't fit in. She is a beautiful, popular girl who doesn't stand out. Both of them hate each other on principle. Steve Rogers is the last person Alison Lynden imagines becoming friends with, much less falling in love with. But sometimes odd pieces of the same puzzle fit together in a perfect way, if only one chooses to let them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've made just slight changes to the original story of Captain America: The First Avenger. In this story, Bucky and Steve are seniors in high school when the war is going on and they enlist. That's pretty much the only major change; their ages have been lowered. Oh, and also, Steve won't be in love with Peggy Carter, because she will still be around her normal age of 26 (or whatever it was). 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Marvel Comics. No infringement was intended and no money was made off this story. 
> 
> Read, review, enjoy!

Alison Lynden had important things to worry about, such as: 1) Would she be invited to the college-aged party this weekend, and 2) Why hadn’t she buffed her nails last night (She decided this very moment to pull out a buffer and begin shining her nails), and 3) Why hadn’t Jimmy sent a letter home recently, and…4) Why was someone standing in front of her desk, tapping their shoes, and saying, “A- _hem_ ”?

_Oh, damn. You’ve done it now, Alison._

She slowly looked up from her now-glossy-as-a-mirror nails to give Miss Thompson her sweetest smile. “Yes, Miss Thompson?”

“Alison, what was I just discussing in class right now?”

Truthfully, Alison had no idea what Miss Thompson had been discussing. She got good marks in school but her mind, as of lately, had been wandering more and more in school. She just didn’t feel like it was as important to care about geometry or whatever they were learning, given all that was going on in the world. But she knew that was definitely not the right answer right now—and Alison always gave the right answer. So she smiled again and said, “The war effort?” She was blindly guessing, but there was a good chance it was the right answer, since most teachers seemed to harp about the importance of war effort as often as they could these days.

“Wrong, Alison,” Miss Thompson said sternly. “I was announcing partners for the term project I told the class we’d be doing at the beginning of the year. Did you hear who your partner was?”

“No,” she said cockily, making several girls near her giggle and some boys give each other appreciative looks. The thing about Alison was, she never lost her cool. She could give as good as she could get—and she gave more often than she got, since people were afraid of stepping on her toes or getting in her way. She wasn’t exactly a _bully_ the way Meredith Walker, the true queen bee of the school, was—but she was definitely higher up on the social ladder than most students. And everyone knew it.

“Steve Rogers,” Miss Thompson said, her nostrils flaring. “Now, would you mind paying attention during the rest of class and attending to your nails in the privacy of your bedroom? The classroom is not the time for such frivolities.” She moved back to the front of the classroom and began to resume calling out pairs of students as partners. Meanwhile, Alison was mystified. Steve Rogers? Who was Steve Rogers? She’d never heard the name before, had she?

She scanned the room, mentally checking off every boy in the class, until her eyes fell upon a boy in the back and she bit back a groan. _Now_ she remembered who Steve Rogers was: the short, slender boy who was sickly and always getting into strange fights with people much bigger than him. He was an inch shorter than Alison and just as slender as her, if not a bit more. It was something that made Alison instantly scornful of him. Men shouldn’t be shorter and skinnier than her, not even by a little bit. The reason he hadn’t been on Alison’s immediate radar like _some_ losers were was because of his best friend, Bucky Barnes. Bucky was tall and handsome and popular enough that he kept people from messing with Steve—much. He didn’t run in the same circles as Alison (she had always gotten an uncomfortable feeling around him, as if he disliked her, and it made her squirm) but he was well-liked enough that she never gave Steve Rogers a second thought.

Now they were partners for their important class project. He had been looking down at his desk this whole time but he looked up now and locked eyes with Alison for a second. She rolled her eyes and turned away from him, fighting to keep her pretty face from settling into a permanent pout. Mother always said that scowling was so unattractive and that she would never find a good boy if she kept that expression up.

Class ended and immediately her friends surrounded her desk, giggling. Cheryl, Denise, and Eliza. They immediately began exchanging gossip about their partners:

“I got _Jack_! Oh, swoon!”

“You are so lucky! I got that brat Shelly Reinhart, she always hogs all the attention—”

“You’re one to talk, Denise! You never shut up! I got Jeanine Whatsherlastname, I guess she’s okay? Does anyone know anything about her?”

“Nah, she’s alright, my sister knows her brother. She’s kind of quiet but she’s nice enough—”

“Oh, thank God, I still have nightmares from the project I had to do with Eric Wentworth, do you remember that chump? Ugh!”

“At least we don’t have Alison’s partner,” Cheryl cut in slyly. “Steve Rogers? That’s awful, sweetie.” And she patted Alison’s hand.

“It’s fine,” Alison snapped. All three girls looked at her. She sighed. “Sorry—I’m just annoyed I got stuck with such a dweeb. But it’s fine, I’ll do the whole thing on my own probably and I’ll barely have to talk to him.” Cheryl still looked a little wounded so Alison immediately began damage control. She nudged Cheryl and winked. “But you got Jack, you lucky thing. He’s so gorgeous, I always feel like I’m going to pass out around him!”

“Right?!” Cheryl shrieked. “I don’t know how I’m going to—oh, shoot!” She checked her wristwatch. “I’m late to pick up Anna!” Anna was her younger sister who went to the elementary school down the street. “My mother’s going to _kill_ me! See you later!” She rushed off and Denise and Eliza made their goodbyes as well and they all parted, going their own ways.

Alison exited the high school after gathering her books, thanking the Lord it was Friday, and hurried out into the street. She heard the sounds of some type of altercation coming from around the corner and her natural curiosity got the best of her. She peeked around the corner—to see Steve Rogers surrounded by four boys twice his size. Four boys who were also in their history class. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. What was wrong with this stupid boy? Did he have some sort of death wish? If that was the case, he should have enlisted.

She listened closely to what they were saying and her heart sank when she realized they were talking about _her_.

“So we saw that you got Alison Lynden as a partner!” one of the boys, Mike, said. He nudged Steve very roughly. “What do you think about that? Sound good to you?”

Steve was silent. Alison felt slightly offended. He didn’t think she was good enough? A moment later, her common sense caught up with her. He was being silent out of self-preservation.

“Do you think she’s pretty, Rogers?” another one of the boys asked. “Long golden hair, blue eyes, and a figure like—” And then he made a disgusting grunting sound that made Alison want to wretch a little bit. This was definitely Eddie McVeigh. Eddie had harbored a crush on Alison for years, one that made her stomach turn. She wanted a popular, handsome guy, and Eddie was all of those things—but he also had a cruel streak that was alarming. She didn’t mind an ambitious man, a winner—in fact, she preferred it (she thought, never having actually had a real steady)—and she didn’t want a loser, but she also didn’t want someone who would have no problem beating someone smaller than him to death. And Alison had the strangest feeling Eddie would have no problem with that. She’d seen him aim a kick at a neighborhood dog once, when they were fifteen, and she’d never forgotten it.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” one of the boys asked sharply and Alison heard a dull thud and closed her eyes again. “What, you _don’t_ think she’s pretty? Too good for her? What do you think about that, Eddie boy?”

“I think she’s my girl,” Eddie said, “and you’d better keep your hands to yourself, Rogers, if you know what’s good for her.”

Alison had had enough of this nonsense. She definitely wasn’t in the habit of sticking up for the picked on kids—it would ruin her reputation and besides, they deserved it, didn’t they, for being weak?—but she wasn’t about to let Eddie call her “his girl” and get away with that. “That’s enough, boys,” she said, stepping into view and crossing her arms. “Get moving.”

“Aw, come on, Alison,” Eddie said, coming up to her and trying to put his arm around her. “We was just having a bit of fun!”

Alison shook his arm off and give him a derisive glance. “We _was_ , Eddie? Perhaps you need to re-take elementary English. It’s we _were_. Oh, and I’m not your girl, so don’t call me your girl. Now leave Rogers alone. Thompson won’t allow for partner changes, you know that, and I’m going to have a hard time getting my project done alone if my partner is in the hospital.”

She shooed the boys away and they left, grumbling and shooting Steve dirty looks as they went. He just stood there silently, dusting himself off. He didn’t look much worse for the wear. All they’d done was push him against the wall a little. Alison was already regretting stepping in because now she might get a reputation as a loser lover, which was why her words came out more harshly than she intended when she snapped, “Well?”

Steve looked up in shock, as if surprised she was talking to him. “What?”

She tapped her foot impatiently, reminding herself of Miss Thompson. “Aren’t you going to say _thank you_?”

“For what?” he asked.

“For—for saving you!” she said, outraged.

“But you didn’t save me,” he said simply. “You just didn’t like McVeigh calling you _his girl_. Otherwise you wouldn’t have stepped in.”

This was all true but Alison could only stare at him in rage. _What an insolent bunch of tosh_ , she thought furiously. _You’d think he’d be grateful—but no, he’s trying to act like_ I’m _the bad one, the shallow one!_

“Okay,” she said icily. “Maybe that’s true. But you still have a face, right? So I think some thanks are in order.”

“Fine,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Right,” she said after a moment, unnerved by his flat tone and blank expression. What was wrong with him? Didn’t he feel things? Maybe he had some sort of problem. Maybe that was why he got into fights. Maybe he didn’t _feel_ things like normal people? “Well. We’re partners for the project.”

“I know,” he said.

“So we should—” She took a deep breath through her nostrils, reminding herself of her mother when she was anger, “—we should meet sometime. This weekend. To plan our project.”

“Okay. Where do you want to meet?” he asked.

“The public library,” she decided. “We can pick a topic and start looking things up.”

“Fine,” he said. “When? Saturday…night?”

Alison stared at him as if he were mad. Saturday night? Did he honestly think she had nothing better to do than do research with _him_ on a Saturday night? “Sorry, I actually have a social life,” she said meanly. “Let’s do Sunday afternoon, after church. Four.” Then she turned and walked away before he could say if it was fine or not. She’d decided on the time, now he would have to work with it. She wouldn’t let the likes of Steve Rogers upset the perfectly planned predictability of her life.

She just wouldn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

As it turned out, Alison _was_ invited to the college-age party on Saturday. She was excited to go but as soon as she was there, she found her heart wasn’t in it. She kept alternating between worrying about Jimmy—he hadn’t send them a letter in quite some time—and feeling anxious and annoyed over having to meet with Steve Rogers the next day. So she feigned an upset stomach and went home alone. Her girlfriends didn’t even care; they just kept on dancing with the few boys who were left in town, too young to enlist (not that that stopped most of them from trying repeatedly). Most of the girls left were college-aged while the boys were high school aged, so the boys were clearly in heaven.

She had a fight with her mother before she went to bed, as usual, and then spent the night tossing and turning, slipping between fretful nightmares of lost boys in the winter of the war and having to sit alone at lunch while everyone laughed at her. She wondered what Jimmy would say about her now. She’d become a much shallower creature in his absence. Would he be disappointed in her? That would have broken her heart. She was thoroughly devoted to her older brother. Unfortunately, she had the uncomfortable feeling he wouldn’t like the sister he came home to.

_If he comes home._

The result of her tossing and turning was that the next morning, she looked like an absolute fright—or so she thought, anyway. Her mother agreed, frowning at her and telling her to go fix her face before going out in public. “I won’t have any daughter of mine going out with shadows under eyes,” she remarked coldly, setting her teacup down on the table. Alison rolled her eyes but knew her mother was right. Appearances were everything. They were the reason she’d managed to trick people into assuming she was wealthy for this long. No one knew her family struggled as much as—if not more than—other families out there. The Depression and the Second War had certainly taken a toll on everyone in the nation.

She covered her dark shadows with cover-up, painted light pink rouge onto her cheeks and applied a light pink natural lipstick, and then spent a few minutes painstakingly darkening her eyelashes. Then she set her golden curls, thanking God that she’d had the good sense to go to bed with her naturally-pin-straight hair in curlers. Curls were all the rage these days. When she was done, she looked presentable.

“Angel!” her father sang from behind his newspaper as she entered the small kitchen and her heart rose. Where her mother constantly scolded her and told her the numerous ways she needed to improve her looks, walk, talk, and attitude…her father thought she was perfect the way she was. She knew it was horrible but she was glad the first war had damaged Daddy’s left leg to the point where he had to walk with a limp and a cane. That had saved him from being drafted this time. She knew her father would never have survived another war, even if he came home in one piece. He still woke up shouting sometimes, frozen as if he were locked somewhere in some trench with men dying around him, and not in the comfort of his own home.

She was just glad her father couldn’t go to war for a good reason. People understood why he couldn’t go. He’d made the sacrifices for their country the last time. It was nothing like poor Ellen Craig’s father. Alison shuddered when she remembered how everyone in the community had shunned Ellen and her mother after her father had ran for it. Deserters were despicable. What kind of man didn’t fight for his own country? Ellen and her mother had had to move eventually because the shame was too much for them.

She kissed her father on the cheek—“Morning, Daddy!”—and ate a slice of toast with jam before heading out to church with her parents. She participated in the usual routine of greeting cheeks with all of the most important women in the area with her mother after services. No one in the area was anything as posh as the women on the Upper East Side…but they had their own hierarchies down here in Brooklyn as well and it was important to adhere to them. Afterwards they went out to lunch. They didn’t have the money to spare, but it was important to be seen on Sunday afternoons in their Sunday best. They ordered the cheapest things at the local nice restaurant and chatted with more families who had also come over from their church. Alison pretended to care about the daughters of the women her mother was talking to but she didn’t. Some of them weren’t in her league and some of them were out of her league. Then they headed back home so her mother could take her routine Sunday afternoon nap before starting dinner and her father could…do whatever he did in his free time. Usually reading and doing crossword puzzles. The Lyndens weren’t very creative people.

Alison checked the clock and saw it was 3:30 p.m. now. She put her shoes back on and headed out the door. When her mother asked to know where she was going, she called, “Library to do a school project,” and knew her mother would be satisfied. Grades were important to show she was an educated, well-bred girl. A future husband wouldn’t want a girl who couldn’t even to basic sums to help balance checkbooks and do grocery shopping.

She was early to the library and figured she would browse the fashion magazines before Steve showed up but to her surprise and irritation, he was inside, leaning against one wall, waiting for her. Why had he arrived more than half an hour early? Didn’t he have _any_ sort of life?

“Hi,” she said shortly, coming to a stop near him. She cut him off before he could speak. “Let’s get started. What do you want to research for our project?”

“Do you care if I pick the topic?” he asked, surprise crossing his slightly beaky face. He coughed into the elbow of his shirt and Alison edged away slightly. He was always sick for some reason. She didn’t want to get sick as well. Being sick was a surefire way to ruin your looks.

“I don’t mind,” she said truthfully, “as long as we get a good grade on it.”

“Then I was thinking we could research some artist or art movement,” he said.

“This is a history class, not an art class,” she replied testily.

“I know, but we could _connect_ it to history!” he said, seeming oddly excited now. “We could research some art movement of the past—how it changed history or affected something in history…”

Alison gave him a strange look. His blue eyes seemed to light up and his normally serious, rather blank face was excited now. Clearly he was passionate about art. That was…unexpected. “Fine,” she relented, not having the willpower to argue with him. Besides, if he was this passionate about the topic, he would probably do a good job on the project. He might even actually do most of the work. Perhaps Alison could sit back and relax for once, instead of doing the whole project herself, which was usually the case.

They asked the reference desk to show them where books on art and artists in history were located and the woman behind the desk led them to the second floor of the library, a dusty corner in the back where it was clear hardly anyone had ventured there before. “I don’t know anything about this,” Alison said, “so you need to tell me what to look for.”

“We could…talk about…” Steve scanned the shelves. “Impressionism. Look for books about Impressionism, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Alfred Sisley…”

“Wait, wait, stop!” Alison said. “I’ll never remember any of those names. Write them down for me.”

Steve shrugged and pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of the bag slung over his shoulder. He listed all the things to look for and handed it to Alison. He had terrible handwriting but it was legible, so she began to pull out books that were about the people and things he had listed, sighing at the thought of having to read through these. Or, at the very least, _skim_ through them.

“They’ll be ruining all these,” Steve muttered to himself as they searched.

“What was that?” Alison asked.

His face colored pink and he busied himself with the shelves, skinny shoulders hunching together as if to hide his face. “Nothing.”

“No, tell me,” she said. “You said something was being ruined?”

He hesitated and then turned to look at her. “These works of art. Made by the people I wrote down. A lot of them—most of the pieces—are in France. And last I heard, the Nazi bast—” He stopped and turned even redder. “Sorry. I meant, the last I heard, the… _Nazis_ have been looting and destroying art across Europe.” His delicate hand clenched and it appeared he didn’t notice. Clearly the thought of this art being lost or destroyed was very distressing to him.

He seemed embarrassed by his outburst and they both perused the shelves in silence for a few more minutes, letting out the occasional sneeze by all the dust flying around. Well, it was the occasional sneeze for Alison; Steve sneezed quite a lot. She asked, in an offhand voice, “So you like art?”

He was silent but she knew he’d heard her. She kept scanning the shelves for books but her mind had wandered too far for her to even be aware of what she was looking at now. Finally he replied, “Yes. I’m an artist. Well—I mean—I like art. And I draw.”

“That’s nice,” Alison said simply and she meant it. She wished she could draw. She wished she had _any_ talents at all, something to make her special. She wondered if Steve was good at drawing. If he was, she would loathe him even more. It wouldn’t be fair, this scrawny, perpetually-sick boy having talents while _she_ got nothing at all.

Finally they had enough books to do significant research with and they carried the teetering stack down to the reference desk. “I’ll check them out on my father’s card,” Alison said, handing over her father’s library card while Steve fumbled in his pockets for his card. He muttered his thanks and helped her carry the stack to a section full of tables near the back corner of the ground floor. It was reserved for students studying or people reading for leisure but no one was there. Alison couldn’t imagine why any young person would want to hole themselves up in a dark and dusty library and ever read for fun and she remarked so.

“I’ve done that,” Steve said blankly.

Of course he had. Even when she wasn’t trying to insult him, she insulted him.

They decided to divide up the books between them and take notes on their respective books. Then they would regroup, try to combine their information into useful bits, and then create their project. They were to present some sort of historical topic to the class in a ten minute speech with some type of diagram or prop as an aide. Alison wasn’t quite sure what they were going to use as their props.

“So why did you come here so early today?” she asked casually, carefully sliding her books into the large school bag she’d brought. “Didn’t you go to church with your mother?”

“My mother’s dead,” he said. Alison looked up in shock, just in time to see his blue eyes dim slightly at the mention of his mother.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was thoughtless of me.”

“I didn’t think you would care about that,” he said.

“Beg pardon?” she asked, confused.

His face colored slightly and he looked down.

“No, tell me what you meant,” she commanded.

“Only that…you’ve been thoughtless nonstop,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “So I didn’t think—”

“So you didn’t think,” Alison said tightly, her voice shaking with anger, “that I would be _decent_ enough to feel bad that I asked you about your dead mother. And you can’t even be a man and look me in the eyes when you say it.” She slammed the last book into her bag, bending some pages in the process, and coldly said, “Well, that’s fine. If that’s how you want to think of me, I don’t care. It’s not like we’re friends, of course, so it doesn’t matter. Read your half of the material and have it done by next weekend. We’re going to meet up then and get this damned—” She paused, wondering what her mother would say about her swearing—and then decided she didn’t really care at the moment. “We’re going to finish this project and get it over with,” she finished, “so you don’t have to suffer through another moment of seeing _thoughtless_ me.” She turned and flounced out of the library, her dramatic exit slightly ruined by the heavy bag which kept slamming into her legs.

She was in such a fury that she didn’t even realize she was walking headlong into someone until she knocked right into them. The weight of her swinging back yanked her backwards and she would have toppled over had they not grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back to standing, steadying her. She looked up in relief, ready to give her thanks—but her heart sank when she saw who it was: Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers’ pal. He’d apparently been lounging outside the library. Why, she had no idea. Most girls would have been thrilled to be saved from a fall by Bucky Barnes but not Alison. Something about him put her off.

Not that she thought he was cruel or some sort of lecher or anything of that sort—it was just that he was not the type of man Alison liked. She knew she openly stated that she liked tall and handsome and commanding men, but deep down inside, she wished she could find a sweet and sensitive man, someone gentlemanly and soft-spoken. Like the princes from old fashioned fairy tales. She never spoke this wish out loud because people would have laughed at her and told her she wanted a “softy” or a “girl” instead of a _real_ man. She didn’t understand why a real man couldn’t be gentle and sensitive…but apparently he couldn’t and that was that. And Bucky Barnes, as handsome as he was, was simply too cocky and arrogant and suave for Alison’s tastes. She always felt like she’d never be able to keep pace with him.

And then there was the little fact where he always looked at her like she was beneath him—like she was a silly, shallow, spoiled, selfish little girl who was a bully and a coward. It made Alison furious—how dare he look down upon her?—but it also made her feel small inside because a part of her whispered, _Well?_ Isn’t _that who you are? Isn’t that who you’ve made yourself become? He’s not wrong to look at you scornfully_.

“Easy there,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, quickly stepping away from him.

“How goes the research?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, a strange expression on his face. It looked a little condescending. Alison didn’t like it. And of course Steve had told him all about the project and his partner. He’d probably told awful tales about her to Bucky.

“Fine,” she said curtly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my mother will be—” She stopped short, cursing herself. Why did she always make herself sound like an uptight priss around him? “I need to be on my way,” she corrected, and then hurried past him, not daring to look back at him.

With the way this day had gone so far, Alison desperately hoped her mother wouldn’t immediately get on her back when she arrived home. Her mother had a way of raising Alison’s hackles right away—either by criticizing her clothes or face or behavior, or by demanding to know the intimate details about Alison’s every move, or by sighing and giving Alison scornful looks while muttering about how her only daughter was a disappointment… Alison would never understand what she could do to measure up to her mother’s impossibly high standards.

However, it seemed fate was not on Alison’s side today. She arrived at their small brownstone home and immediately knew something was wrong because she didn’t smell any dinner cooking, didn’t hear the radio playing, didn’t hear the faint sounds of her parents murmuring and talking…

Heart pounding, she dumped her bag of books in the foyer (promising to pick them up before her mother saw and scolded her) and hurried into the kitchen, calling, “Mother? Daddy? Where are—” and froze when she saw them sitting at the dining table, frozen wax figures, a letter sitting on the table between them. Her father’s cigarette had almost burned itself out and he hadn’t even noticed.

Her mouth went dry. “What—what is it?” she asked, hurrying forward but too afraid to pick up the letter and read it. “Is it Jimmy? Is he—did they say he’s—?”

“Your brother,” her mother said in a carefully controlled voice, “is missing in action.” And with that, she got up and went upstairs to her bedroom to draw the shades and rest. Alison’s father patted her hand sadly and then made his way to the family room to sit in silence, aimlessly twiddling with the radio and drinking glass after glass of liquor. Liquor they couldn’t afford. And Alison was left to desperately try and pick up the pieces. Cook dinner for the family—dinner that sat left untouched and cold. Read her research books and do her homework, even when her mind was a million miles away. And cry into her pillow at night, praying that her brother would find his way back home alive and well.

Alison Lynden didn’t lead half the charmed life most people thought she led.


	3. Chapter 3

The week passed torturously for Alison, resulting in her being in a very irritable mood when Friday rolled around. She moodily played with her limp hair (she hadn’t had the urge to curl it properly) while Miss Thompson droned on and on about some stupid topic. She didn’t really care. Ever since she’d heard the news that Jimmy was missing in action, nothing had seemed to matter much anymore. She knew Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted her to throw her life away over him—but she couldn’t help it. He was the one person in the world she loved more than anyone else. If her brother died…who else would she have?

“Alison, are you listening?”

Her head shot up to see Cheryl, Denise, and Eliza staring at her. “What?” she asked wearily.

“Miss Thompson told us to gather into groups of three or four and come up with as many reasons as possible for how the invention of the national railway system changed America,” said Eliza.

“Okay,” Alison said tiredly. She sat there and the girls sat there, staring at her, waiting, and it occurred to Alison that they were waiting for _her_ to take the lead as usual, because she was the smartest and most studious out of all of them. They were used to her taking charge and saying, “Alright, so this is what we’ll say…”

“Sorry, I’m really tired,” she said. “I was up all night taking notes for my project. Can someone else take lead on this? I can hardly think right now.”

“Why are you hurrying so much on the project?” Denise asked in surprise. “It’s not due for another three weeks. My partner and I haven’t even met.” She giggled.

“I’m meeting my partner today to get it done,” Alison said. She immediately wished she hadn’t because the girls looked slightly shocked and Denise said, “But…you’re going to do _schoolwork_ …on a Friday evening…with _Steve Rogers_? But—but why?!”

“Because,” Alison snapped, “he’s the most annoying person I’ve ever met and I’d like to _not_ meet him any longer than I have to. So I’m getting the damned thing done today whether it kills me or not!” Her shoulders and neck and ears felt very hot and she was aware that Steve was sitting a few desks behind her in the back. She partly hoped he wasn’t paying attention to what she said. It would just give him more reason to think she was thoughtless.

The girls looked slightly shocked at her language and a strange, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile lit Cheryl’s face and she sweetly asked, “Alison, are you feeling well? You’ve been looking a little… _peaky_ lately.” The word “peaky” dripped off her tongue with girlish disdain.

Cheryl’s words were kind but Alison knew enough about females to know the intention wasn’t nice at all. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said shortly, hoping Cheryl would know better than to push it.

She evidently didn’t.

“Are you _sure_?” Cheryl pressed. “You look very pale, and…are those shadows under your eyes?” She leaned forward and then, to Alison’s immense shock, she tugged on one of Alison’s golden locks and said, “Even your hair is looking less shiny and you haven’t curled it!”

Alison’s blood ran cold. She knew exactly what was going on. This was the world of women, where one week it was, “Are you feeling well? You’re looking…peaky,” and the next week it was whispers and scornfully pitying looks and the week after, you were sitting alone at lunch wondering what had happened to you while another girl took your place. Cheryl was second in command and she had always vied for Alison’s position, the position that Alison’s looks automatically gave her. And Cheryl was now challenging Alison’s authority.

“Are you sure _you’re_ alright?” Alison asked coldly, leaning forward and invading Cheryl’s personal space. “You’ve been going out quite a lot lately and it’s taking a toll on you. Look at your skin and hair—so pale and dry! All that alcohol is sucking up any moisture in your body. You’re also not doing so well in school, right? That’s no good, Cheryl. Perhaps if you focused a little less on socializing with boys young enough to be your little brother and focused more on your studies and moisturizing your skin, you’d feel better about your life and stop focusing on _mine_! How about that?” She beamed at Cheryl while keeping her gaze icy cold. Cheryl’s face had gone white with shock and she looked at Denise and Eliza for help—but they both examined their hands as if their nails were of the greatest interest to them. Alison could see Cheryl weighing the options in her mind: she could try telling Alison off…but nothing she saw now could be more insulting than what Alison had said—and then she would also be out of the group.

Or she could swallow the insults like the good beta she was and keep her place in the group of some of the most popular girls in the school.

“Thanks for the concern,” Cheryl said with a faux-smile, her mouth trembling slightly. “So glad to have you girls as my friends! If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the washroom…” And she rushed from the room just as Miss Thompson called all the groups of students back to regroup as one class and share their work. Alison knew Cheryl would now be crying in the washroom. She didn’t care. Could, for once in her life, people leave her alone about her looks and face? Could people stop trying to control her and undermine her authority and status?

When Miss Thompson called on their group, Alison rattled off the perfect answers despite the group not having discussed anything of the sort—she’d done reading on the very subject earlier this week—and when Miss Thompson had moved on, she felt a burning spot between her shoulder blades. The feeling of being watched. She turned to see Steve staring at her. His expression told her that he’d heard the entire exchange between Cheryl. His expression looked disappointed.

 _Nosy busybody_ , she thought angrily to herself, turning around. _Why can’t anyone leave me alone?! Why is everyone always watching my every move?!_

As soon as class ended (it was the last class of the day), Alison stormed to Steve’s desk and said, “Meet me in the park as soon as you gather your things. We’re going to exchange information and finish this stupid project once and for all.”

“Bucky and I had plans—”

“I don’t care what Bucky and you were going to do!” Alison barked. “I need to finish this project! Meet me. In. The. Park.” She turned on her heel and stormed away, grabbing her books and coat and stomping all the way to the neighborhood park a few blocks away, slamming her bag down onto a picnic table and waiting for Steve while glaring at every stupid smiling child and parent who passed her. She knew she had been unnecessarily rude to Steve and that she was making herself seem meaner and meaner with every word—but she didn’t know how to stop. She felt trapped, like every word she spoke simply dug herself into a deeper hole. And if she was already this deep, what was the point in even _trying_ to climb her way out? She wouldn’t be able to and no one would help her even if she tried.

Steve approached the picnic table and set his bags down silently. Alison busied herself with pulling her books out so she wouldn’t have to look at his face. She already felt ashamed at herself for treating him so badly but she didn’t know how to apologize without embarrassing herself so she just didn’t.

“Okay, so here are the notes I compiled from the books I read,” she said, pulling out a composition book and opening them to several pages filled with detailed notes in very beautiful handwriting. “I didn’t really _read_ every book—I skimmed some of them—but I’m sure I found the important information. I focused on—”

“Why are you so mean?” Steve asked suddenly, flatly.

Alison’s mouth fell open and she stared at Steve. “I—I beg your pardon?” she gasped, unable to believe he had actually openly asked that. Was he brave or just very stupid?

“Why are you so mean?” he repeated. “Normally I would never ask a lady a question like that—but I saw how you treated Cheryl. All she was doing was asking you how you were—”

Alison covered her face with her hands and took a few deep breaths and then snorted with semi-hysterical laughter. Poor, stupid, dense lad—he was a _boy_ , of course he thought Cheryl was “just being nice.” She didn’t have the time to explain the intricacies of silent female warfare to the likes of Steve Rogers so she took a deep breath and said, “I’m not mean for no reason but since no one is ever going to understand anything about me or what I go through, let’s just accept the fact that I’m mean and move on? No one is ever going to think otherwise so I suppose I’ll own the label and wear it with pride. I’m mean. Satisfied? Now, can we get back to the project?”

“No,” Steve said, leaning back and looking at her with such an intense expression that she felt uncomfortable. “What do you mean you’re not mean for _no reason_? What good reason could have for being mean?”

Alison sighed. “Look, you’re not going to understand either way—so I’d rather not waste my time trying to explain.”

“Try me,” Steve challenged.

Alison stared at him, her chest tight. Words threatened to rush up her throat and overflow out of her mouth and she tightened her lips.

“Come on,” said Steve. “Explain it to me, if there’s a reason—which I highly doubt—”

“THERE IS!” The words burst from Alison’s mouth with such fury that she almost surprised herself—and then she was off and away, speaking so quickly that she was startled at her own ferocity. “You don’t understand, alright? You’re talented, or you must be, anyway, at something but either way, you’re a _man_ so it’s alright for you not to be talented! All _you_ have to do is get a job and earn some money and your life will be set! It’s not the same for me! I’m a girl and I need to make a decent match to live my life! And I have nothing! I’m not talented in any way.” Bitterness twisted her mouth as she remembered every failed attempt at starting a new hobby or finding a talent. “I can’t draw, I can’t sing to save my life, I’m useless at athletics, I’m not very smart in my studies, I can hardly cook or bake or even sew—I can’t do _anything_. Mother won’t let me go to college, unless it’s to take finishing courses of some kind, and I’m never going to get any scholarships for art or music or dancing—” Her words choked off here as panic over her future threatened to overpower her ability to speak. Or breathe.

She took a shuddering, deep breath and continued. “I can’t do _anything_. The only thing that’s good or useful about me is my _face_ and my looks—but a pretty face is nothing with a commanding presence, Mother says, and this is why I need to be mean to people, to stay in charge at school. To stay popular, so I can get invited to parties and so finally, one day, some handsome, rich sap will fall for me and won’t even mind that my family doesn’t have any money or that I’m not a rich, educated debutant—and maybe he’ll marry me and maybe I’ll have a chance at a good future. And the only way to stay popular is to rule the school and that requires being mean at times. Cheryl wasn’t being nice to me earlier, she was insulting me with a smile on her face and I only served back what she gave to me because—I need to make a name for myself, alright? Mother says no one will notice me if I’m a wallflower! But I’m so—s-so—” And here she burst into tears. “I’m so t-tired of Mother harping me about my looks and my body and my clothes and what I wear and who I talk to. I’m so tired of people watching my every move and judging me. _No one_ knows how hard I work to stay perfect. I have to study twice as long and hard as most people to get the same marks as everyone else and no one knows how hard I work to make sure my clothes are fashionable and my face always looks perfect—” She angrily rubbed her tears away and said, “And then I get judged from every corner! Mother, for not looking, walking, talking, _being_ perfect. My friends—if you could even call them that—for looking less than perfect. From _you_ , because all you see is some shallow, mean, ugly-hearted girl when in fact—in fact—the only person who really knows me is my brother and he’s probably dead in some ditch in Europe because I just got word that he’s missing in action!” And then she burst into tears again, unable to control herself this time at the thought of Jimmy never coming home.

She cried silently for a few minutes while Steve sat silently, not saying a word, and then suddenly he was offering her a hanky and saying, “You’re wrong, you know.”

She accepted his hanky, not even caring that it was probably covered with his germs from his constant illnesses, and patted her eyes. “About what?” she asked thickly, keeping her face turned away from him. Her whole face felt hot. She already half regretted telling him all this—he would probably tell all of this to Bucky Barnes, who would laugh and then tell _his_ friends and then the whole community would know all of Alison Lynden’s insecurities—but a part of her really didn’t care if people found out. She was so tired of walking around with all of her fears and insecurities and heartache held tight against her chest and it felt—it felt so _good_ to just let it out.

Even if she had let it out to Steve Rogers, of all people.

“I think you are smart,” he said mildly. “You said you weren’t smart in school. I think you’re wrong. You always get some of the highest scores in class and you always know the answer when the teachers call on you.”

“That’s not because I’m _smart_ ,” Alison said, blowing her nose into the hanky. “That’s because I work hard. I study constantly at home. That’s not the same thing as being smart.”

“Says who?” Steve demanded. “Who said being smart meant automatically knowing everything? You know your strengths and weaknesses and you prepare for them by studying in advance. Seems awfully smart to me—but then again, what do I know? I’m just poor, sick Steve Rogers, right?” His words were bitter but his lighthearted tone told her he was joking and she let out a startled laugh.

“I suppose,” she said. “I never really…thought of it that way.”

“Well, now you have a new perspective,” Steve said. “That’s what art is all about. Seeing things from a new perspective. You should try doing that more, because I think—I think you can always find good in a bad situation if you do that.” He looked thoughtful as he said this and Alison wondered if looking at things with a new perspective had saved _him_ from drowning in bad feelings. From the little she knew about him, his life didn’t seem easy: his mother was dead, he was constantly sick, he was constantly picked on, and girls didn’t give him the time of the day because he wasn’t tall and strong. “And I think you should stop caring so much what your mother thinks,” he added. “Not to be rude, but she sounds like she doesn’t appreciate you at all. Her advice sounds really stupid.”

“I’ll try doing that,” she said. She looked down at the sodden hanky and said, “I’ll wash this and give it back to you.” He nodded. “I must look an awful fright,” she muttered to herself, patting around in her bag for her compact mirror. She couldn’t find it. She must have left it at home.

“I think you look pretty,” Steve said. Alison looked up at him in surprise and he blushed a little. For some reason, she blushed too—even though boys giving her compliments was nothing new—and then, to regain her composure, huffed, “If you tell anyone what I told you today, I’ll skin you and make boots out of your hide.”

Steve’s eyebrows rose, making him look almost comical. He didn’t have a bad face, Alison noted suddenly. Features were a little large for his face but he didn’t have a bad face…in fact, he could easily be seen as _decent_ … “Very violent threat,” he said. “That sounds more like the Alison I know.”

 _The Alison I know_. The connotation that there was an Alison he knew at all—it made Alison shift uncomfortably, as if some invisible line had been crossed, and she quickly said, “Alright, let’s get back to the project. The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can be out of each others’ lives.”

She could have sworn Steve looked almost dejected for a moment but then his expression cleared and they got to work.

* * *

 

Despite sharing notes and compiling them into one big mass of information to be presented to the class, they only finished half of their work. Alison hadn’t realized how much information both of them had compiled and it was difficult as well, because they’d both focused on different things during their reading and therefore had to pull their books back out and skim them, trying to find more information that matched up with each others’ works.

“We planned this poorly,” Alison sighed, listlessly flipping through a book.

“We still have time to get it done,” Steve assured her. They flipped in silence for a few minutes while the sky steadily darkened and a slightly chilly breeze blew past them. Alison shivered and Steve must have noticed because he said, “Do you want my jacket?”

“What? No,” she said, startled and a little embarrassed. What was wrong with him? Didn’t only men who were pursuing a girl offer them their coats?

“But you look cold,” Steve said, looking concerned. “It’s only the right thing to do—”

“But then you’ll be cold,” she pointed out. “And you seem to get ill quite often. I don’t need my partner dying on me before we complete the project. I’m fine.”

“Alright,” Steve said, though he looked unsure.

“Thank you for offering, though,” Alison added, since she now felt a little bad that she had refused his kind gesture—for that was what it was, she now realized. Steve Rogers was strange and a loner, but he was also a gentleman. He had offered her his hanky (which was odd in itself, since many men didn’t even carry those anymore) and now his jacket. He was just being chivalrous, which Alison found disconcerting, because most men were chivalrous only for personal gain (such as getting to put their hands on the woman) or _insisted_ on their chivalry being accepted. Steve, however, had maintained a respectful distance from her and had also accepted her refusal with good grace. Clearly he had good manners, something which brought him up a notch in her opinion.

“What you said earlier…” he said slowly, twirling his pencil. His handwriting was awful but Alison noticed he had slender fingers—artist’s fingers.

“I thought we agreed not to speak about that again,” she said, flushing.

“No, I meant about your brother…did he really die in the war?” Steve asked. “I’m—sorry if this is a touchy subject, but I just—if he did, I wanted to offer my…I wanted to say sorry. Any man who lays his life down in the line for his country deserves complete respect.”

“He’s not…I don’t know if he’s dead,” Alison said. “But we got a letter telling us he’s missing in action.” Her mouth pinched together. “And that likely means he’s dead—or will die soon.”

“Not really,” Steve said urgently. “He could still be alive!”

“I hope so,” Alison sighed. “He’s my best friend. I can’t imagine what I’d do if—I don’t want to talk about it,” she said abruptly. Talking about Jimmy was too painful.

“Okay,” Steve said. “But if he _does_ die…at least you know he died an honorable death, a hero’s death. There’s no better way to go.”

“There’s no good way to go at all!” Alison snapped, stung. “Death is death!”

“I don’t think so,” Steve said firmly. “A man can die doing anything—but if he dies fighting for his country…that’s something different. Death is death but when soldiers die, they’ve died doing something great. They’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. And they ought to be commemorated for that.”

“You sure feel strongly about this,” she remarked. “Do you have someone in the army?”

“No one but my best friend,” he said.

“Bucky Barnes?” Alison asked, curious now. “Isn’t he too young?”

“No, he just turned of age,” Steve said. “He’s one year older than most of the seniors. He started school late in primary school because of the whooping cough. He’s so lucky,” he added bitterly. Alison was shocked. This was the first time she’d seen the slightest hint of anger or bitterness on Steve’s face.

“Lucky for what?” she asked acidly. “Lucky that he gets the chance to die?”

“Lucky that he gets a chance to do what every man ought to!” Steve said, flaring up. “I wish I could. I’ve already tried enlisting a bunch—they reject me every time, tell me I’m too young or I’m too sick.” The anger in his tone was evident. “It’s so stupid. My life is worth no more than other men’s—worth _less_ , even. Who cares if I’m small or sick? I should be fighting for my country like every other man.”

“But you would surely—” Alison froze.

Steve gave a crooked smile. “Surely what? Surely die? I know. I’m the kind of sucker who doesn’t come home to glory and medals. But I don’t care. Like I said, dying in war is a great sacrifice—one that I’m willing to make.

Honestly, why were men so stupid? Why did they think that fighting, wars, death, getting the chance to get themselves killed made them _lucky_? Was there something in men that made them inherently want to do reckless things and call it “heroism”? Alison thought being a hero meant taking the high road and refusing to engage in brutish behavior such as war. But she had a feeling she should keep such thoughts to herself around Steve.

“Well, maybe they’ll let you enlist in a little bit,” she said. “Who knows how long the war’s going to go on? They’ll need more men eventually and they’ll have to stop being picky.”

“I hope so,” Steve muttered and that was that.

Soon it got too dark for them to work on the project anymore and they stood up to pack their bags. Alison knew they had wasted more time than they should have, talking about personal matters, but strangely enough, she felt at peace, even though she now had more work to do for the project. Unburdening herself had felt amazingly cathartic. And, despite herself, she found herself curious about Steve Rogers and his odd life and circumstances. What a strange boy. She could make neither head nor tail of him. He was weak, quiet, and fragile—and yet was also an artist who longed to fight and go to war. Somehow it didn’t add up in Alison’s mind. There was definitely more to him than met the eye.

Before parting ways, Steve said, “We should exchange addresses.”

“Why?” Alison blurted too quickly. A second later she regretted her panicked tone because it could clearly be seen as offensive—but the truth was, she _didn’t_ want Steve to come over to her house. Not really because she saw him as embarrassing (which he very well could be seen as) but because she knew her mother could easily make some sort of snide, condescending, and hurtful remark towards him and that would be too much. He would think, _So_ this _is where Alison gets her hideous personality from_ and Alison couldn’t bear to be thought of badly anymore—at least not by him. The rest of the world could think of her as a mean, horrible person but now that Steve knew the truth about her, she didn’t want him to start thinking of her as a bad person all over again.

He gave her a strange look. “So we can eventually meet to create the diagram or whatever? We won’t be able to do that in public. We’ll probably make a mess.”

“Can we meet at your place?” she asked. “My mother—my mother hates messes.”

He shrugged and then pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled his address down, handing it to her and asking, “Can you read it?”

She squinted through the violet evening light and said, “Barely.”

She saw a faint hint of a smile on his face as they said goodbye and turned away from each other, heading in opposite directions.

           

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Alison was in unusually high spirits on Saturday. She had gotten more work done on her project and she had _finally_ opened up to someone about her troubles and struggles. Sure, it had been Steve Rogers, which made her slightly uncomfortable—but somehow she knew deep down that he wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d told him. He was a gentleman. And even if he hated her—which he still very well might, considering she’d still been plenty awful to him—she didn’t think he would reveal her secrets to anyone. Alison had never opened up to anyone in her life before except Jimmy, and Jimmy had been gone for a few years now, so her heart felt lighter than air when she woke up on Saturday morning. Not even her mother nosily asking why her face looked tearstained the night before and warning her about the beauty-ruining effects of crying could bring her down.

To make her day even better, Denise came calling upon her around noon, saying she had something important to tell Alison. She said hello to Alison’s parents and then both girls escaped into Alison’s room. “Well?” Alison asked. “What is it?"

“So Cheryl feels scared about what happened yesterday,” Denise began, “and she wanted to—well, you know, make it up to you. So she badgered her older sister and she got us tickets to a show _at the Red Lioness._ ” She spoke the last words in a hushed whisper, eyes wide and starry, looking utterly gleeful.

Alison’s mouth dropped open. “What?” she shrieked. “How did—but how—”

“I’ve no idea!” Denise said excitedly, grabbing Alison’s hands and jumping up and down a little. “But I don’t care! We’re going to the Red Lioness!”

The Red Lioness was a very elite establishment uptown, a high-end joint that was part bar, part historic speakeasy, and part nightclub. It was extremely difficult to get into, very wealthy and beautiful people attended, and Alison had heard some very illicit stories come out of the place, some of them even making small columns in newspapers around the city. It was the type of place that was discretely wild—everyone knew that daring things had happened there but no one’s names ever made the papers and the cops never arrested anyone. Discretion was a big plus of the Red Lioness.

It was the kind of place Alison could never have gotten into in a million years, the kind of place her parents would never have let her go to—but now she was getting the chance to go. Queen bee Meredith Walker couldn’t even boast something of this size.

Denise excused herself soon after, telling Alison that she needed to go get ready and letting her know where the girls were going to meet up to take a cab to the Red Lioness, and Alison herself soon after escaped her home to go make sure her outfit was perfect.

She made her way to her favorite shop, furtively looking around to make sure that no one recognized her. The back door tinkled as she entered and immediately the shop owner, Flora, was upon her, saying, “My, we haven’t seen you for quite some time, Alison!”

“No,” Alison said apologetically. “My family—we got some bad news.”

Flora gasped dramatically. “You don’t mean—Jimmy—?!”

“He’s not dead,” Alison said hurriedly, “but—he’s missing in action.” Her stomach twisted painfully at the thought. _Please be alive. Please come back home well._

“Well, _still_ ,” Flora said, looking upset. “That’s no good! I’ll be praying for you and your family then, you be sure about that, alright, doll?”

Alison smiled. “Thank you, Flora. Now, I have a big favor to ask…I need a dress.” Flora looked a little puzzled and she elaborated, “The fanciest dress I’ve ever worn. I’m going to a…very fancy party. I’m looking for something sleek, mature, but also appropriate.” She couldn’t wear anything too daring because her parents would still see her walking out of the house.

“Hmmm, something sleek, mature, appropriate, but also very fancy,” Flora mused. “That’s a tall order, Alison. You know what this means, right?”

“I’ll do an two extra hours tomorrow,” Alison said quickly. “And then two more next weekend.”

Flora pretended to think about it but Alison could tell she was sold on the idea. “Sounds swell,” she relented. “You wait right here, sweetheart, and I’ll go whip up some of my magic.” She winked at Alison and Alison felt her heart lift with relief as she watched Flora hurry off. She was eternally grateful that she’d stumbled upon this solution for clothing.

Alison’s family was not destitute but they didn’t have much money. Her mother could afford to buy her reasonably nice dresses and ribbons and shoes, but nothing extraordinarily special. But to be at the top of the pecking order—Alison needed things better than just _reasonable nice_. This was where Flora had come in. Alison couldn’t even remember how it had started but eventually, Flora was loaning out her gorgeous, exquisitely made dresses in exchange for Alison teaching her relatives English. It was a secret because Flora’s relatives were illegal immigrants. They didn’t have any papers or documentation and they lived with Flora in secret. Flora constantly worried that they’d be found out and sent back to their war-torn and poverty-stricken motherland in the Old Country.  And somehow Alison ended up teaching them English in exchange for getting to borrow Flora’s dresses and wear them like they were her own. Flora got free advertising this way, Flora’s relatives were taught English (Flora hoped that once they could all fluently speak English, they would be less at risk for being caught), and Alison got to dress in nice clothing at little cost but her own time and patience. She’d started out teaching just two people but over the years, the number of people had grown and she now taught a family of five.

Alison’s mother knew about the deal but she wasn’t privy to all of the details. She simply thought Alison tutored Flora’s children in their schoolwork in exchange for borrowing clothes. Alison knew her mother hated the idea of it—it seemed too much like charity for her mother to accept with grace—but her mother had never stopped her either, because she too desired her daughter to wear the best of the best clothing to offset her pretty looks. It was one of the few times Alison appreciated her mother’s determination for Alison to succeed at all costs. Because even though Alison hated how hard her mother pushed her to look and be perfect, Alison herself _was_ very feminine and wanted to look good.

Flora conjured up the perfect dress for her in no time and Alison thanked her and left, hurrying home with the bag tucked under her arm. They were meeting at six so she didn’t have much time left, if she wanted to look good. She spent the rest of the afternoon taking a bath, washing and curling and setting her hair, pinning herself into her dress so it fit perfectly (Flora hadn’t had time to tailor it to her figure), doing her makeup more nicely than she had ever done before, spritzing herself with her mother’s Emeraude perfume, and then borrowing her mother’s pearls and fastening them around her neck and to her ears. She considered wearing white gloves but then decided against it, thinking it might be too much. She wasn’t going to the prom—just to the Red Lioness!

When she was done, it was 5:45 and she looked perfect. She looked at herself in her full-length mirror and admired herself. Her golden curls shone, her blue eyes seemed to glitter, and she wore red lipstick. The black dress had a sweetheart neckline and little capped sleeves and it fit her like a glove thanks to her pinning, accentuating her tiny waist and hourglass figure. She wore low-heeled black pumps with it. She wished the heel were a little higher but Mother said that high heels were vulgar on young women. Mother’s pearls glowed at her neck and on her ears and she smelled wonderful. A tiny purse with a silver body hung off her shoulder with a thin silver chain. Inside was some emergency money, her compact, her lipstick, and a small powder.

Her father told her she was beautiful, beaming, and even her mother voiced her approval, which Alison had to grudgingly admit felt nice. She’d told them she was invited to a fancy party thrown by Meredith Walker. Her mother didn’t run in the same social circles as the Walker family so there was little chance of Alison’s lie being found out—but if it was eventually, Alison would deal with it then. She would just lower her eyes and pretend to look embarrassed and say she’d been out on a date with a boy and hadn’t wanted her parents to know.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

She met the girls down the block and they spent a few minutes squealing over their clothes. Cheryl was very complimentary towards Alison and Alison graciously accepted Cheryl’s compliments while letting her know with her eyes that Cheryl would still never be able to take Alison’s place.

Being a girl could certainly be exhausting.

They caught a cab uptown. It took over forty minutes to get there, thanks to Saturday night traffic, but even so, the commute wasn’t as long as it could have been, thanks to the early hour of the evening. Nine to ten p.m. was when the _real_ traffic jam would be. Cheryl led them down the street and around the corner to where the Red Lioness was tucked away into a discrete corner and Alison couldn’t help but twirl once as she walked, looking around and marveling in delight at New York City rising above her, twinkling like stars. All around her, lights—lights from the cars, from the restaurants and clubs open to the evening crowds, lights in the sky scrapers, and somewhere in the night sky, past the New York City smog, lights that Alison couldn’t see.

The Red Lioness didn’t even have a name outside the door—just a simple glowing sign that said RL in curving script. Cheryl pulled four passes from her tiny clutch and handed them to the doorman, beaming.

He looked at the passes and then at the girls. “Ain’t you gals a little young to be partying here?” he asked.

“We’re older than we look,” Cheryl sniffed haughtily. “As you can see, we have legitimate passes. Let us in.”

“Mhmm,” the doorman said in a tone that indicated he didn’t believe a word they said, but he opened the door nonetheless and allowed the girls in.

From that moment, the night was odd. Alison could feel the muffled, thumping swing music shaking the floors and walls as they walked down a dark, elegantly lit hallway and down a flight of stairs, descending into darkness…and then entering a room which Alison could only describe as a den of iniquities. That was the phrase that floated throat her mind when she stepped into the dark, pulsating room: _A den of iniquity._

Sensual, heavy music played, the kind one could move their body to, and the air was smoky with cigarette smoke. People sat at the bar and mingled, holding martini glasses, and on a stage in one corner, under golden lights, cabaret girls and showgirls danced and swung around poles, necklaces glittering on their necks. Low-slung sofas and settees scattered the room and people lounged, stood, sat, and moved to the music in turn. Men wore suits and had their hair either slicked back or cut up in pompadours and undercuts. The women wore daring gowns, slinky and low-cut and tight, all plunging necklines and thigh-high slits. Alison’s dress seemed positively innocent and childish now. The whole room was crowded, positively packed with people, and it smelled like smoke, sweat, and sin.

Alison began to feel a bit frightened. She’d never been to a place like this and she wasn’t so sure she liked it, now that she was here. Sure, it was mature and daring—but it also seemed like it could swallow her whole and spit out her bones. Her hands trembled and she held them tightly at her side. She couldn’t allow the other girls to see her fear. Alison Lynden was fearless. She followed her friends, who shouldered their way through the crowd to the bar.

“I want to dance!” Denise shrieked and Cheryl and Eliza’s eyes lit up in agreement. They all seemed fine, completely at home. Alison wondered what was wrong with her—why wasn’t she enjoying herself? Maybe she just had to give it time.

“I’ll stay here,” she found herself saying. She didn’t want to dance.

“Aw, come on, Alison!” Eliza said, grabbing her hands and trying to tug her away from the bar. “It’ll be fun!”

“In a little bit,” Alison promised. “I feel a bit lightheaded right now.”

Her friends shrugged and then hurried off, vanishing into the crowd. They hadn’t even asked her if she felt okay or if she would manage alright on her own. Alison wished she had a real friend, at least just _one_ real friend, someone she could tell her true feelings to and not feel judged.

 _Well—I did tell Steve Rogers my feelings_ , she thought. _But Steve Rogers is_ not _a friend…is he?_

“Why, look at you,” someone purred right next to her and she started, jerking up. A heavy hand rested on her thin shoulder, keeping her in place, and she looked up into the face of man with dark hair and a five o’clock shadow, a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. He was handsome…and he also looked middle-aged—like most people in the Red Lioness. He wore a suit that Alison could tell was expensive. His cuff links flashed in the dim light as he said, “And what’s your name, doll?”

“Alison,” she said, her mouth slightly dry. His hand was still on her shoulder and she tried to shrug it away but his grip was a little too tight for her to be able to casually shake him off. What did he want? She wasn’t an idiot—she knew what older men wanted with younger women, she knew she had to be on her guard. But she’d never dreamed they would like girls _as_ young as her. She hadn’t even turned eighteen yet.

Of course—he didn’t exactly know that…

“And what’s a young, pretty little thing like you doing here alone?” he asked. “You look lonely, baby. I’ll keep you company.”

“I’m not alone,” Alison said. “My friends are here, somewhere—”

The man waved them off. “Leave them. We can have our own fun here. You had a drink yet, dollface?”

“I’m seventeen,” she blurted.

He looked at her in surprise, saying, “Really? I could’ve sworn you were at least twenty. You look older than your age.” But then he shrugged and winked and said, “But now that you’re here, you may as well have that drink, right?”

Alison’s heart sank. This guy was no Steve Rogers—he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

The man, whose name was Robert she found out, kept plying her with drinks. Alison had hardly ever drunk alcohol before this—just some champagne and some wine—and this liquor was completely different. It burned like fire going down her throat and it made her feel dizzy. Her vision was blurry and she felt as if she were thinking through underwater, slow and stupid. “I don’t want—anymore,” she said, her words coming out a bit slurred. Robert looked at her and laughed and said something to the bartender, and then handed Alison another drink, saying something that sounded like, “Drink up, sweetheart.”

Alison obediently lifted the glass to her lips to take a sip but the glass suddenly felt too heavy in her hands. She dropped it and it shattered. Robert swore and she felt the corners of her mouth turn down—had she done something wrong?—and he quickly said, “It’s fine, darling, it’s fine…” And suddenly his face was too close to hers. His breath smelled like alcohol and he was nuzzling her neck and Alison couldn’t push him off but she felt frightened and all she knew was that she didn’t want this—no, she didn’t like this—

Vomit rose in her throat and she bent over and threw up. Robert leaped back with a cry of disgust. Alison didn’t know what happened after that. She supposed Robert had stormed away in pursuit of another victim. She felt gentle hands pulling her into a dark, secluded corner and she heard a female voice say, “There, there, dear…”

* * *

 

Alison’s head pounded. She slowly sat up, her swimming, and rubbed her eyes, looking around blearily. Where was she? As she looked around, trying to keep more vomit down, she realized she was still in the Red Lioness. Her dress front was covered with vomit, her hair was messed up, and she smelled strongly of vomit and alcohol. When she rubbed her face, her hands came back smeared with red and black and white and she knew she had messed up her makeup as well. She tugged on the dress of a woman standing nearby and pathetically whispered, “Excuse me—what time is it?”

“What, dear?” The woman bent closer to listen to her, not seeming to care about how bad Alison smelled.

“What time is it?” Alison repeated. How long had she been passed out? She prayed it had only been half an hour or something of the sort.

“It’s around midnight, sweet cheeks,” the woman said. “You got sick at the bar so I led you to this corner to sleep it off. You look mighty young to be here, do your parents know—”

Alison was already stumbling away by this point, not even caring that she was being rude. She couldn’t catch her breath and her heart was hammering in her chest. Her eyes and nose felt hot with an onslaught of oncoming tears. She was having a full blown panic attack. Where were her friends? Had they left without her? Why would they do that? Her parents—her parents would be panicking—what if they called the police? How was she going to get home?

After stumbling through the room twice, wildly looking for her friends, head and heart pounding, nausea churning her stomach, she stumbled up the stairs and out into the streets, hoping the summer night air would clear her head. She had never been drunk before so she didn’t have any idea how to control herself. She stumbled towards the street and almost fell into oncoming traffic trying to signal a cab. Thankfully a cab stopped and she threw herself in, almost sobbing her address. Tears rolled down her eyes the whole way home while the cab driver gave her confused, concerned looks in the mirror and she closed her eyes, trying to calm down—but she couldn’t. She had messed up, _she had messed up so badly._

When she finally arrived home, she threw the entire wad of cash she had at the driver to compensate for making him drive out of his way, and stumbled up her front walkway, banging on the door. It opened immediately and she hurried inside to find her parents both standing there, faces white with fear and fury.

Alison then received the worst dressing down she had ever gotten in her entire life. Her mother paced up and down the hall, shrieking and screaming about how Alison was a liar, a disgrace, filthy, worthless. She gasped in horror over Alison’s ruined dress, thinking about how much money it would take to get it cleaned. Alison’s father demanded to know where she had been and Alison refused to tell them. He then began roaring at her in anger, ranting about how he was disappointed and disgusted in her behavior. Her mother demanded to know if she had been taken advantage of and Alison shook her head, tears rolling down her face. Hysteria was building in her chest because her parents kept screaming and shouting at her in turn and all she could do was stand there, shaking and crying.

Finally, it was too much for her and she fled up the stairs to her room, slamming and locking the door. Her parents followed and shouted outside her door for a few minutes, demanding to be let in—but when it became clear that Alison wasn’t going to open the door, they finally went away. She heard them going through the motions of getting ready for bed, loudly muttering and griping about the fear and trouble she had caused them tonight—“Just wait till tomorrow, young lady!” her mother shouted from the hallway at one point—and then _finally_ the house was quiet, her parents’ door slamming shut.

Alison hunched over on the floor, trying to control the sound of her sobs, but it was too much. She needed to get out of this stupid house. She needed air. She needed to go talk to someone, to be around someone who might be sympathetic. She didn’t deserve sympathy but she wanted it anyway, because everything hurt right now—both physically and metaphorically.

Without even really thinking about, she dug through her bag and found the address that Steve had written down for her. Kicking off her heels, she slipped on her silent flat saddle shoes and quietly crept out of the house, making sure the front door was unlocked behind her. She fled down the roads, her tears blinding her as she made several wrong turns. Would there be no end to the tears tonight? It seemed Alison was crying a lifetime’s worth of tears. She wasn’t even thinking otherwise she would have questioned how wise it was to go to Steve’s house. As it was, she just needed to see a familiar face—one that hadn’t abandoned her in a nightclub or was looking at her with disappointment and anger.

She eventually found his apartment and knocked on the door with shaking hands, trying to control her tears (and failing miserably). She didn’t even know what Steve could do to help—maybe he would send her away, or maybe he was asleep, or maybe he _would_ mock her. All she knew was that she had to try—

The door flew open and to her intense horror, Bucky Barnes stood in the doorway, golden light from behind him lighting up his dark silhouette. She could hear the sounds of multiple people talking and laughing from inside and Steve’s voice calling, “Who is it?”

Bucky stared at Alison in shock, taking in her state, and then he called, “Uh, maybe you’d better see for yourself…”

Alison really felt like throwing up now. This had been a huge mistake. Her night had just gone from horrible to really, truly terrible.

Steve appeared next to Bucky and his mouth fell open as he took in Alison’s state as well. “A-Alison?” he stammered. “What are you—are you _okay_? Are you crying?!”

“H-Hi,” Alison said numbly, tears sliding down her face as she thought about her future—or lack thereof now. “I—I—I got a great idea for our pr-project and it was so amazing that I started c-crying, you know? And I had to t-tell you right away. So—now I’ve told you.”

Bucky and Steve both stared at her.

  _I’m going to die._

“Excuse me?” Steve said, looking very shocked now. “Did you just say you were going to _die_?”

Oh…had she said that out loud by accident?

“Did someone do this to you?” Steve demanded. “You’re crying—and there’s vomit—are you _drunk_?”

“I,” said Alison and then she stopped, not knowing what else to say.

“Okay, come inside, we’ll get you cleaned up,” Steve said.

“I need to go,” Alison whispered, taking a step backwards.

“Wait, no!” Steve said, reaching out. “Come inside! I can’t send you home like this!” Alison didn’t know what he planned to do—hug her? Take her hand and lead her inside? Whatever it was, she didn’t wait around for it. This had all been a huge mistake. Steve and Bucky clearly had friends over, judging by the noise inside, and she had interrupted their fun Saturday night (or Sunday morning, technically) by showing up looking like a dead cat dragged through the mud.

She turned and ran. She heard Steve shout her name and run after her but Alison was a considerably faster runner than Steve was, even while drunk. His asthma just didn’t let him move that quickly. She heard him stop running to bend over and have a coughing fit and she felt bad—but not bad enough to stop. Her mind and feet were on autopilot now, tears welling in her eyes again, as she vanished into the dark night, as if she had never been there to start with.

* * *

 

“What,” asked Bucky, an hour later, “the hell was that about?”

“I have no idea,” Steve said, thoroughly bewildered. He and Bucky sat slumped against Steve’s threadbare couches, twiddling their thumbs, unsure of what to do now. Bucky had come over for the evening (just to make sure Steve wasn’t wallowing in depression) as he tended to do every now and then and they’d turned on the radio to some story talk channel and had been sitting around aimlessly playing board games and just talking, when Alison Lynden had showed up.

And what an Alison Lynden she had been. Steve had never seen her look anything less than perfect and composed—except for when she had broken down in front of him, of course—but this was beyond anything else. Her face free of makeup, her eyes red-rimmed, entire face tearstained. Her golden hair was messed up and she smelled like alcohol and vomit, vomit covering the front of her otherwise beautiful dress. Dull saddle shoes, completely at odds with her other fancy attire, adorned her feet. She’d been crying and looked in desperate need of some comfort (and perhaps a bath and some clean clothes and warm tea) but when Steve had tried to help her, she had rambled off some ridiculous story they all knew was a lie and lurched backwards, stumbling like someone who was clearly not sober.

She looked like she’d been… _attacked_.

Fierce protectiveness had risen in Steve, surprising himself (because since when did he care about _Alison Lynden_?) but she had run off before he could help her. This worried him immensely. He would never have let a girl go off on her own at this time of night to start with—but especially not one who was drunk and emotionally compromised and upset. He had chased after her but an asthma attack had stopped him from getting very far. After that was over, Bucky helped him scour the neighboring streets…but Alison was gone. And Steve had no idea what to do now. He was very worried about her—what if she got hurt? What if she collapsed? What if she ran across some dangerous men?—but he didn’t know where her home was or where she could have gone.

“Well,” Bucky said finally, “it looks like things are getting interesting.”

Steve didn’t even bother trying to figure out what that meant, he was so lost in his thoughts.

Bucky eventually dozed off after neither of them said much for the rest of the night but Steve sat there, thinking and worrying, confused over everything—including his feelings. Alison Lynden had always been rude to him, so why did he care so much now that she might be hurt? The answer was simple: he was a gentleman and, more than that, a good person. He cared about people. But why was he taking this so _personally_? It felt like more than simple caring. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Another thought rose to his mind, though he tried to squash it because it felt wrong and inappropriate and confusing…he couldn’t help but thinking that, despite her mess and sadness, she had looked beautiful as she cried because he was finally seeing her without her makeup, without her cold defensive exterior…he had finally seen her _human_ side. And it had just made her seem so much real, so much stronger and yet breakable all at once, to Steve. It made him want to draw her.

Steve eventually fell asleep as well, troubled with fretful dreams of girls whose faces he couldn’t see who vanished into the night while he chased after them on far-too-slow legs, never catching up to them.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Alison didn’t know how she made it home, but she must have at some point, because she woke up in her own bed the next morning. Her head ached, her mouth tasted cottony and disgusting, and she reeked. Judging by the golden sun coming in through her window, she had slept in late. She took a bath, vigorously scrubbing herself, and tied her hair back, putting on her plainest dress and no makeup. Mother would probably make her scrub every surface in the house as punishment so there was no point getting all dolled up. Besides, she felt too horrendous to even contemplate looking nice. She felt like she had been run over by several cars.

Going downstairs to try and eat something for breakfast, she realized the house was silent and it was close to noon. She’d missed her church—or, rather, her parents had let her miss church. She knew this was less out of the own kindness of their hearts and more to avoid scandal. Her mother would have dragged her out of bed for church had she not been afraid people would smell the scandal on her daughter. Literally.

Thankful that she wouldn’t have to face their wrath yet, she tried to eat something for breakfast. Her stomach still felt nauseous from fear and worry but it was empty and she’d wretch if she didn’t fill it. Her head was pounding. She settled for some dry toast and some tea. Finishing that, she left a note for her parents saying she was going to fulfill her weekly “tutoring” duties and left the house. She didn’t want to go teach Flora’s relatives to speak English—all she wanted to do was crawl into bed with a hot water bottle—but this would keep her away from her parents, so she would take it. She wasn’t sure how they’d show their anger—she’d never done anything like this before to incur it—so it was a bit of a guessing game at this point.

However, Flora dismissed her as soon as she saw Alison’s wan face, limp hair, and crushed spirits. “You’re not fit to be out today,” she chided. “I don’t know what happened, but you need some rest, my girl. Go home.”

“Flora,” Alison said haltingly. “Your dress—I don’t know how to say this but…I’ve ruined it. I’ll pay for it, of course, just tell me how much it would take to get it cleaned—”

“Cleaned of what?” Flora asked.

“Vomit…and alcohol,” Alison said, cheeks burning, eyes downcast in shame.

Flora raised one eyebrow and they stood in silence for a moment. Then Flora said, “Alison, I’ve known you for a time now. You’ve always been a good girl—”

 _Here it comes_ , Alison thought with a heavy heart. _“You’ve always been a good girl…so how could you do something so foolish and horrible?! I suppose you’re not a good girl after all, are you?”_

“—and you still are,” Flora said, startling Alison out of her depressed reverie. “It’s clear you’ve made some mistakes and no doubt you’re being punished enough for it, in a variety of ways…I won’t add to it. We’ll discuss the dress later. Don’t worry about it. Go home and try to get some rest. I expect you’ll need it.”

Alison nodded and gratefully fled. She didn’t want to meet her parents…but she’d have to face the music eventually.

However, as she neared her house, a small figure sitting on her front steps rose as she approached and she froze when she saw it was Steve. They stared at each other for a moment, Alison wildly conscious now that she was wearing a drab dress, no makeup, her hair scraped away from her face in an unflattering, severe pony.

“Hello,” she said finally.

“Hi,” Steve said cautiously, coming down the steps towards her. He was the same height as her—perhaps half an inch shorter. Yet Alison felt smaller than a mouse right now, when she recalled her humiliating behavior from the night before. “How are you?” he asked, sticking his hands into his pockets. “I came to see how you were doing.”

“Why?” she asked.

Steve gave her an incredulous look. “ _Why_? Are you serious? You showed up at my house at midnight, covered in throw up, looking like you’d been attacked, drunk off your feet, and crying hysterically! Who the blazes _wouldn’t_ be worried?”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Alison muttered. “I’m fine,” she added in a normal tone. “Just…tired. And upset, I guess. And worried about everything. Also, everything aches like hell.”

“But otherwise, you’re fine,” Steve snorted. “Right.”

“Is this all you came here to ask?” Alison asked. “Wait—how did you know where I lived?”

“I didn’t,” Steve said, shoving his hands into his pockets and shaking a blond strand of hair out of his intensely blue eyes. “Bucky asked his mother, who asked a friend who knows your mother. I said it was because I needed to meet you for a school project. Half-true—I thought we could also start the project today.”

Alison wanted more than anything to go inside and go back to sleep to work off her headache—but she’d have to finish the project at some point anyway and Steve was offering her the perfect excuse to stay away from her parents further. “Okay,” she nodded. “Just let me get my things. Come inside,” she offered uneasily, as he stood on the front doorstep when she opened the door, looking unsure of whether he should come in or not. He stepped inside and Alison thought to herself, _I’ve invited a boy into my house. Alone. I’m alone in my home with a boy._

_Does it still count if it’s Steve Rogers?_

Alison had a feeling the answer was yes. She hurried upstairs, each thump on the step pounding in tune with the pounding in her head, and grabbed her school things, hurrying back down. Steve had been looking around curiously and looked relieved when they headed back outside.

“Oh, Alison! Yoohoo, Alison!” Alison’s neighbor, Mrs. Fendy, leaned over her front stoop and beckoned to her. Alison made her way over and politely said hello, wondering what Mrs. Fendy wanted. Mrs. Fendy gave Steve a curious look before saying, “This is a bit unexpected, I admit—but your parents wanted me to tell you that they’re…going for an outing in the city.” She looked at Alison, sounding a bit perplexed as to why her parents hadn’t told their daughter earlier. “Did you know about this…?”

“Oh, yes,” Alison lied. “They probably just wanted you to remind me, since I’ll have to make my own dinner.”

“Oh, well you’re welcome to come eat here,” Mrs. Fendy offered.

“Thank you, but—”

“She’ll be eating dinner at my house,” Steve interjected smoothly. He gave Mrs. Fendy a charming smile. “Steven Rogers, I’m her partner for a school project. We’re finishing it now. Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

Mrs. Fendy looked soothed by Steve’s good manners and Alison felt the urge to giggle. “Well, if you need anything, I’m right next door, dear,” she said.

“Yes, I know, thank you!” Alison waved goodbye and then headed down the street with Steve. As soon as they were out of Mrs. Fendy’s earshot, she lightly smacked Steve on the arm and said, “You horrid pretender! The way you charmed her like that—”

“Hey, nothing I said was a lie,” Steve protested.

Alison smiled. “I know. It was just funny, that’s all. Apparently you’re not completely clueless when it comes to women, hmmm?”

Steve turned a bit pink in the face and hurriedly said, “So…your parents went to the city? Which part?”

“I’ve no idea,” she said truthfully. “Hmmm…so _this_ is how they’re choosing to punish me…by ignoring me and giving me the cold shoulder…well, it’s better than what I imagined, anyway…”

“You’ve never gotten in trouble with your parents?” Steve asked skeptically.

“I’m a good kid, normally,” Alison protested. “My mother is always angry at me and Daddy rarely is—but I’ve never been in such a bucket load of trouble with the both of them. This is the first time.”

They were nearing Steve’s apartment now. He didn’t actually live that far from Alison—just in the opposite direction from the park, which lay between their homes. Alison closed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to wipe last night’s memories from her mind, until Steve suddenly yanked her to the side and said, “You might want to open your eyes. You were about to step in some dog sh—poop.”

“Ugh!” Alison squealed in horror, quickly checking her shoes while Steve looked like he was holding back laughter.

He led her into his apartment and she looked around, getting a full view of the space through clear eyes. It was very…empty. Devoid of personality, clinical almost. The walls were bare except for a few paintings of very generic-looking flowers. The sofas were brown, the drapes cream-colored. Everything was clear and it didn’t look like any humans lived here: no books, no magazines, no shoes laying around, no noise…nothing.

“Had a gathering last night?” Alison couldn’t help but ask, feeling a tiny bit jealous. Despite her popularity, she rarely invited people to her house for fear their sharp eyes would catch the real shabbiness of how they lived—and for fear that her mother’s tongue would run unleashed and say something embarrassing to Alison.

“No,” Steve said, looking surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s just—I heard voices. Last night,” she said awkwardly.

“Oh, that was the _radio_ ,” Steve said, pointing to the large radio sitting in the corner. “Bucky and I were listening to some…talk show? I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening. So…we should probably get started working,” he said, looking a bit nervous suddenly, though Alison couldn’t see why. She pulled out her books and they spread their work across the coffee table, sitting on the ground around it. Putting their heads together, they made quite a good team, Alison realized in surprise. He was quite clever, though you would never have known by how silent he was at school, never raising his hand, never offering anything in class discussions…

The time passed more quickly than Alison would have thought and when she next looked up at the clock, two hours had passed and they had made quite headway into their project. They had successfully compiled all the important information they needed and had even drafted the first version of their speech.

Steve noticed her looking at the clock and also looked up at it, asking, “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“No, I was just…funny how the time flies, huh?” she said, smiling slightly.

He stared at her for a moment too long and her smile slipped— _What? Did I do something wrong? Do I look ugly smiling without lipstick?_ —and he suddenly got to his feet and said, “I forgot to offer you something to eat or drink…” and hurried off to the tiny kitchenette across the room, separated from the small family room by a waist-high wall.

Alison would have said, “No, it’s alright”—except she really was hungry. So she allowed Steve to rummage for some food. Eventually he stepped back into the family room, looking a little embarrassed. He wiped at his forehead and said, “Turns out, I don’t have much…of anything. Is orange squash okay?”

“More than okay,” Alison said. That was a luxury her parents didn’t like to indulge in anymore, even though squash and concentrate weren’t that costly.

Steve brought her a glass of the too-sweet syrupy drink and she sipped it gratefully, feeling a little low on energy all of a sudden. All that looking at facts about Impressionism and art scales…

“So…not gone grocery shopping lately?” she asked conversationally.

Steve shrugged. “Not really. I forget, I guess. Bucky’s mom forces him to bring things to me though, sometimes.” He let out a strange chuckle, one that hinted to a past Alison would never be privy to or understand. A whole world of experiences that she wouldn’t get, people she wouldn’t know.

“Where’s everyone else?” she asked, slightly concerned about his state of living. He was only her age and he was a _boy_ —who made him meals? Who washed his clothes? Who talked to him when he was lonely? “Your dad…any siblings…?”

“My dad died in the Great War,” Steve said bluntly. “And I don’t have any siblings. Just Bucky.”

“He’s like a brother to you, isn’t he?” Alison asked softly. She’d never liked Bucky Barnes much but she was starting to like him a bit more now. Maybe he _did_ look down on her (which still angered her) but he also watched out for Steve, so the boy couldn’t be all that bad or arrogant.

“Yeah, he is,” Steve said. His tone was open, simple, no shame in it. “We’ve been best friends for—wow, I’d have to think back…years. Since we were kids. When did you meet your best friends?” he added politely.

Alison stared at him for a moment, heart yearning for the day when she could talk about having a _true_ best friend the way Steve talked about Bucky now, and then she leaned back against the sofa’s bottom behind her and let out a small, short laugh. “Come on, Rogers. I think we’re past these sort of pretenses by now. You know very well that I have no best friend. Cheryl, Denise, Eliza…they’re just my…companions. Or my backups. I’ve never had a real friend. Guess I’m just too unlikable—or _thoughtless_ ,” she added, giving him a sly look.

Steve colored. “That was rude of me. I mean, you _were_ thoughtless…but I shouldn’t have brought it up. Besides,” he added thoughtfully, “you seem different now.”

“Thanks…I suppose.”

“So are you ever going to tell me what happened last night?” he asked.

Alison sighed. “I’d rather just pretend it never happened, to be honest.”

“That’s not an option,” Steve said. Alison was a bit surprised to hear how— _commanding_ his tone sounded. Not in a brutish way, but in a very…calm, self-assured sort of way. He spoke like someone who knew exactly what he wanted to hear and say. Like someone who could be a leader, a proper one: honest, open, unflinching. Yet another side to him that Alison had never anticipated.

“Come on,” he added more gently. “You scared me. Can you imagine _your_ reaction if I showed up on your doorstep in that state?”

“I’d scream and push you down the stairs,” Alison told him truthfully.

Steve rolled his eyes slightly. “Well then, it’s a good thing you were the one who showed up looking like that, right?” He froze suddenly, realizing what he had said, and began stammering. “Wait—that’s not to say it was _good_ , what happened to you, whatever it was—I only meant, as a joke—”

“Breathe, Rogers,” Alison said. “Don’t have an asthma attack on me. I know you were joking.”

Steve took a few moments to breathe normally while Alison wondered why he had so many illnesses. Was he born prematurely? It would explain his scrawny size. However, this question definitely wasn’t appropriate to ask so it was one Alison would have to shelve.

“Well?” he finally said, making it clear that he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Fine,” Alison said in exasperation, throwing her hands up slightly. “I’ll tell you! But promise me you won’t judge me… _too_ badly.”

“I won’t judge you at all,” Steve said with such a solemn expression that Alison almost giggled—until she realized he actually meant it: he wasn’t going to judge her. Feeling slightly relieved but mostly awed by his good will (and feeling slightly ashamed that she wouldn’t have been able to do the same; judging was a part of Alison’s nature), she told him the story, first haltingly, embarrassed over how superficial she seemed to come across—and then more animatedly as she relived the horror of the night in her mind. She almost forgot she was talking to someone, she got so lost in telling her story. It was a bit of shock when she came to the end of the story: “And so…I don’t know, I was so afraid that you and Bucky would judge me or laugh at me or—even worse, _sneer_ at me—I just ran for it.”

“Is that really what you think of me?” Steve asked, looking a bit upset, a serious expression on his face. “That I would _sneer_ at you if you were really in trouble?”

“Well, I _was_ drunk,” Alison reminded him. “I wasn’t in my right mind. Of course I know that you’d…you know, help me.” _Do I know that?_ she wondered, pondering. But the answer was as clear as day to her: yes, she did know deep down inside that Steve would help her if she was in some trouble. _Huh…that’s funny…when did I start knowing things like that?_

“Anyway, that sounds horrible,” Steve said. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Your friends—they’re not really your friends, are they?”

“Like I told you,” Alison said with a crooked smile, “I have no real friends.” Steve looked down at the table and said something so quietly that Alison missed it. She leaned forward and said, “Beg pardon? Could you repeat that? I didn’t—”

“I _said_ …I’m your friend.” Steve’s ears looked red and he was avoiding Alison’s gaze. “Only if you want, though. I’m not trying to force anything on you, only that…you’re different than what I thought and we haven’t killed each other yet, so…if you want a friend, I’m here. If, you know, you—”

“Want,” Alison finished softly. “I know, I heard.” Her face felt hot too but she forced herself to work through it: Steve was right. Despite having hated him before for being skinny, quiet, socially awkward, and unpopular…she’d come to see Steve Rogers was so much more than she’d expected. He was smart, a surprisingly good listener, a gentleman, artistic—and he even had a funny, charming side that popped up every now and then, like sunshine through clouds on an overcast day. She had been shallow to hate him over reasons that had been weak to begin with and she still _was_ a shallow girl—she knew this, she couldn’t deny it—but she was also smart enough to realize that she had come to enjoy Steve’s company more than she had ever enjoyed Cheryl, Denise, and Eliza’s company…and she’d spent only a few hours in total with Steve, when you counted them all up.

“That sounds lovely,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Friends. Yes. We can definitely be friends.”

Inside, she couldn’t help but wonder what _she_ offered Steve. Nothing, it seemed like. As she’d told Steve before, she had nothing to offer to the world. The thought nipped at her, tugged at her heart, but she ignored it as she always had done. Despite having an inflated sense of self-importance in social matters and extreme vanity in her looks, Alison Lynden had pretty low self-esteem when it came to her own worthiness. She knew she was pretty and popular but she also thought herself to be empty and devoid of anything interesting or good on the inside. It was the kind of thing that brought true unhappiness to a person’s soul.

Having gotten more than enough work on the project done far ahead of schedule (the project wasn’t due for quite some time), Alison knew she should leave and go home. But she found herself unable to move. Sitting around, chatting with someone who wasn’t judging her with catty looks and insults hidden as compliments…it was nice. Nice to simply _talk_ —and talk about things that mattered.

“About last night,” she said hesitantly. “I know _you_ won’t tell anyone—but Bucky wouldn’t—he wouldn’t tell anyone, right? He’s pretty popular, he knows a lot of people, if he were to let something slip—”

“He would never,” Steve said hotly, defending his best friend. “Bucky’s a stand-up guy.”

“I never said he wasn’t! It’s just that I always felt like he hated me,” Alison explained. “Like he thought I was…stupid or shallow or…”

_Insignificant._

“I’m pretty sure Bucky didn’t think those things,” Steve said, “but even if he did then—I think he thinks differently now. He wouldn’t spread stories like that, and especially not about a woman who needed help.”

“Tell him thanks from me, then,” Alison said. Noting how Steve’s face lit up when talking about his best friend, she asked, “Isn’t it going to be hard? When Bucky’s gone off to war? I know at my place…everything feels empty with Jimmy gone. We haven’t heard from him in ages and now he’s missing in action. If he dies…” She pressed her face against her drawn up knees, wrapping her arms around them.

“Sounds like your brother is _your_ best friend.”

“A built-in best friend, but yes, he was. And now he’s gone. It’s really hard. So prepare yourself,” she said. “I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, and—”

“If I get my way,” Steve said quietly, “I won’t have to miss him because I’ll be fighting alongside him.”

Alison’s eyebrows flew up and she stared at Steve for a moment. Several different thoughts bounced around in her head at once: 1) Steve was too young for war, and 2) Steve was too weak and ill for war, and 3) If Steve went to war, then she really _would_ be completely and totally alone—brother gone, new friend gone…even best friend of the new friend gone.

“Er, I don’t mean to be rude—”

“Yes, you do,” Steve said, but he was smiling so Alison knew not to take it personally.

“—but how exactly are you going to enlist when you’re…” She decided to go for the safer route. “…too young?”

Steve’s face tightened as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking and had chosen to pass up on saying. “I’m going to illegally enlist, like lots of other boys are doing. But you can be honest. We both know they’re not passing me up because I’m too young—I’m only one year away from the legal age to enlist and they’ve already allowed lots of guys younger than me to enlist. They look the other way for them…because those guys are fit.”

Alison awkwardly looked at her nails, trying to pretend she didn’t know exactly what Steve was talking about.

Steve sighed. “Look at me—I’m skinny, I’m short, I’ve had every illness known to mankind. It’s a wonder I’m even alive.”

“So why would you want to throw that all away then?” Alison demanded, unable to stop herself. “Maybe this is God’s work! Maybe He’s trying to…I don’t know, save you from _dying_ when you’ve already avoided death so many times.”

“That makes no sense,” Steve said hotly. “My life isn’t worth more or more worth saving just because I’ve been sick a lot. In fact, other guys have a lot more to lose than I do: wives, kids, girlfriends, parents… Every man able to do the job is out there laying his life on the line for our country. I’m not crippled, I can move, I’m perfectly able to go to war and do my part—so how do you think it makes me feel when I’m told I’m _too weak_ …or even worse, _being saved from a certain death_? I don’t need to be saved! I just want to do my part!”

Once again, Steve was showing fanaticism for war that Alison just didn’t get. But she didn’t try to talk him out of it. There were almost certainly parts of _her_ life that he didn’t understand or agree with (such as how she deferred to her mother instead of rebelling against her once and for all), but he seemed to keep quiet on those, so she would respect his choices and do the same. “I get it,” she said. “I mean…I don’t _exactly_. But I know what you mean about wanting people to judge you and take for who you _are_ and not what you look like.” Alison hadn’t even realized it until she said the words but now she knew how very true it was: amazingly enough, she and Steve were very similar in the way where their appearances always managed to send a message about them before anyone could ever get, or want, to know them.

Who’d have thought she’d have _anything_ in common with Steve Rogers?

Steve looked relieved that she understood and suddenly blurted, “Say, there’s this—this world fair, exposition type of thing happening next weekend, on Saturday, the night before Bucky leaves…I’m not really sure what it is, but Bucky says it looks interesting…would you like to go with me?”

Alison froze for a moment. Was he…asking her out? On a _date_? But almost as soon as thought hit her mind, he added, “As friends, of course. Since we don’t have to pretend we hate each other anymore.”

 _Oh—he just meant as friends._ Alison supposed she should feel relief.

So why didn’t she?

“That sounds like fun,” she said. It wasn’t exactly normal or appropriate for guys and girls to be close friends but she considered herself a modern girl and decided she didn’t really care either way. No one could look at someone as small and harmless looking as Steve and accuse him of having the capability to behave improperly towards Alison. She was pretty sure she could beat Steve up if she wanted—and she’d never fought anyone in her life. She didn’t even know how to throw a punch.

Steve beamed and she liked the look of a smile on his face. “Great. I guess I’ll meet you at the fair at seven.”

Well, at least Alison knew it definitely wasn’t a date now. A gentleman would _never_ meet his date at the location—he would escort her to the location. She didn’t know whether to knock herself on the head or laugh or cry over her strange thoughts and confusions but she settled on smiling back and saying, “I look forward to it.”

           

 


	6. Chapter 6

The rest of the week passed in a strange haze for Alison. Her parents, never having needed to punish Alison so seriously before, didn’t seem quite to know how to do it and divided their time between ignoring her and harshly commanding her to promptly do every chore that needed to be done in the house. Alison didn’t mind them ignoring her (indeed, it was a verifiable relief to have her mother ignore her for once) and doing all the chores in the house wasn’t so bad. Once upon a time (just a few weeks ago, in fact) Alison might have sulked over having to unnecessarily scrub the floors because the lye soap would burn and crack her delicate hands but now her mind was too full of things to think about for her to care much. She did her chores silently and efficiently, completely lost in her own world, and her parents couldn’t decide if this made her a good daughter or an insolent one for not seeming appropriately pained by their punishments. As soon as she was done with whatever inane task they had set her to, she would politely bid them goodbye or good day or good night and vanish off to her room, where her hands were occupied with putting on hand cream and finishing homework—but her mind swam with thoughts of Jimmy and Steve and Bucky and her so-called friends and everything she had known about herself and her notions.

Everything was changing for Alison Lynden. She was changing.

If her parents noticed their daughter fading from their grasp, her friends noticed it even more. Alison had broken through her reverie to sharply take them to task for leaving her behind at the Red Lioness but afterwards, she had retreated within herself unexpectedly. They’d been shocked. For their crime, they’d expected a much worse punishment. When Alison Lynden was angry, she could hold a grudge for ages—and no one quite held a grudge like she did. However, she didn’t even do that. Her friends asked her if she was alright since she seemed to be so lost in her own world and she airily told them she was fine but she looked contemplative and a million miles away and they didn’t know what to make of it. She was just…different. Cheryl, sensing a breakdown in the ranks, slowly began to test out the waters to see if she could take over as the queen bee of their group—and to her intense shock, Alison didn’t seem to notice much or care.

If anyone had cared to closely watch Alison over the week, they’d have noticed a variety of expressions come over her face: delight, unhappiness, confusion, contemplation, stress…was there something she _didn’t_ go through that week? Jimmy was never far from her mind and she was still distressed over him—but strangely enough, Steve’s friendship made Jimmy’s loss seem less disastrous. And she couldn’t help but mull over how Steve was different than she’d thought… _she_ was different than she’d thought…and if they were both different, then what was the sense in continuing on as things had been before?

Why was Alison spending her entire life putting up a front and trying to appear as someone she wasn’t? Why was she trying to please people who would never be pleased? Oh, she was still shallow and vain—she didn’t deny these things. But why was she unnecessarily mean and jaded? All to appease her mother and girls who would never give a care in the world for her? Jimmy would be disappointed in knowing who she had become and Steve seemed determined to show her that she _wasn’t_ the girl she professed to be, simply through extending his hand of friendship.

And was it friendship…when something in Alison’s stomach fluttered when she thought about him? He wasn’t the tall, strapping Prince Charming she’d always dreamed of—but he _was_ gentle and intelligent and sensitive, which were things she _had_ dreamed of. He made her feel…welcome.

Oh yes, Alison had much to think about.

And along with her thoughts were her excitement and nerves over the technology expo. She couldn’t help but feel elated at the thought of going out with someone who actually liked her for who she was, unlike spending countless Saturday evenings staring moodily at much older handsome bachelors at diners and roller rinks and bars when they dared to sneak in.

When Saturday rolled around, Alison dressed up again but she didn’t overdo it the way she had the night of the Red Lioness. She did her golden hair up in Victory rolls and put on a simple but pretty brown frock tied with a bright pink satin sash. She applied some mascara, pinched her cheeks for color, and painted on some light pink lipstick. Slipping on white shoes and grabbing her purse, she turned and winked at herself in the mirror, putting her hand on her tiny waist and striking a few poses, blowing some kisses. She looked good and what’s more, she _felt_ good.

She hadn’t told her parents she was going and she knew they might put up a fuss because she was being punished—and she was right. They did. But she flatly told them that the entire school would be there (which she wasn’t quite sure of, but it was likely to be true) and that it would look excessively odd if she weren’t there and did they really want further whisperings about Alison? She struck right into the heart of her mother’s deepest fears: Alison’s reputation and popularity. She could tell her parents didn’t want to let her go but she’d been good all week, her father had a weak spot for his only daughter, and her mother couldn’t tolerate talk about Alison—so she was allowed to go. Swallowing her smug smile, she politely thanked them and almost skipped from her house.

She wasn’t quite so happy when she finally arrived at the exposition, having walked several blocks in her somewhat tight shoes, but she set aside her discomfort to try and have a good night. She stood aside from the crowds of young people and stood on her tip-toes, looking around for Steve.

 _How absurd to stand on my tip-toes_ , she suddenly thought, _when he’s almost an inch shorter than me_ , and she couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Alison!” Someone caught her arm lightly and she turned to see Steve standing next to her, grinning. He wore an atrocious outfit (someone really needed to teach the boy how to dress) but Alison didn’t care, because she was happy to see him.

“Steve!” She hugged him and when she stepped back, she saw he looked a bit shocked. She could see why. She’d never been this openly affectionate with _anyone_ before, least of all him. However, she felt sort of like a new girl after a whole week of some deep internal reflection and thought and decided it was time for a few changes to her personality and actions.

“You look—very nice,” Steve said a bit haltingly. His tone was polite but Alison saw the appreciative look in his eyes as he looked at her and she liked the feeling it gave her.

“Thank you, so do you,” she said politely, meaning it. His suspenders were awfully old-fashioned but his blond hair was neatly combed and gleaming and his smile really was sweet. He gestured for her to follow him inside and she did, placing the crook of her arm in his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He looked a bit startled and she rose her eyebrows exaggeratedly at him to imply that she was play-acting and he caught on, raising his eyebrows back.

“Not bad, Rogers,” she said as he led her over to Bucky Barnes (who was in uniform and looking very proud of it) and a very pretty dark-haired girl.

“This is my friend, Bucky,” Steve said, “and his date, Connie. Connie, Bucky, this is my friend, Alison.”

The girl had short dark brown hair and a laughing red mouth and she waved cheerfully at Alison with her fingers. Alison smiled at her and then looked at Bucky, hating the way her cheeks heated up at the thought of their last few meetings. First she’d been a brat, then she’d been a mess. “Nice to meet you,” she said almost shyly, hoping to god Bucky wouldn’t give her that look that made her feel lower than dirt. Thankfully, he gave her a friendly smile and showed no indication of remembering their past interactions. All of a sudden she could see why Steve had defended Bucky’s honor to her.

All four of them embarked on adventuring around the exposition. Alison at first felt a bit hesitant to be herself in front of Bucky—opening up in front of Steve was very different somehow, in her mind—but he was so friendly and easy-going that she sound found herself on friendly camaraderie with him and Connie (who was an easily-excitable and somewhat flighty but sweet girl).

Alison had just begun to feel really comfortable—when Cheryl, Denise, and Eliza suddenly showed up. They walked past her and then stopped in shock when they saw her standing with her arms linked with Steve (Bucky and Connie having gone off in a determined search to find popcorn). “Alison?!” Denise shrieked and Alison felt her blood run cold when she heard them. She was trying to be a different person but she hadn’t banked on her old friends seeing her so soon with Steve out in public. Of course…she had been stupid not to expect _someone_ from school to see. She turned around in dread and tried to smile. “Oh! Fancy seeing you girls here!”

“Fancy—!” Denise gasped. “You mean fancy seeing _you_ here! You sly thing, you never told us you were coming here!”

“You never asked,” Alison said.

“We did so,” Eliza said indignantly. “Cheryl asked you what you were doing on Saturday night and you said ‘Mhmmm’ in that dreamy way of yours and Cheryl said, ‘That’s not really an answer, you know,’ and you said, ‘Nothing,’ and then Cheryl said—”

Seeing that Eliza could go on for quite some time in this way, Alison broke in and said, “Whoops, I suppose it must have…slipped my mind!”

“Slipped your mind,” Cheryl said slowly, a catty smile on her face. “And did it also slip your mind that you were going to ditch your friends and go with _Steve Rogers_? What are you doing here with him, Alison? You’re project partners with him but to come to the fair with him? Or wait, I’m sorry—is there some _research_ that needs to be done tonight?” She drawled the world “research”, stretched it out nastily, and Eliza and Denise giggled. Alison’s face burned. Steve was silent, waiting for Alison’s reaction.

“Oh well, you’ve been acting really strange lately,” Cheryl sneered, “and if _this_ is the reason why, then I can thank heavens that I no longer call you my friend. When you begin to hang out with losers…you can’t be seen around _us_ anymore. We’ll see you around, Alison…or maybe not.” She turned and began to walk away with Denise and Eliza. Alison stood paralyzed, unable to speak, and she didn’t have to look at Steve to see the disappointment on his face. She could feel it radiating off of him. She hadn’t stood up for herself _or_ Steve. She was spineless. She was weak. She could cut someone down for usurping her social status—but not to defend a proper friend.

 _Yes, I can_ , she suddenly thought to herself in a blaze of determination and before she could stop herself, she called, “Oh, Cheryl?”

The girls slowly turned, arms crossed expectantly. Cheryl raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Alison unlinked her arm from Steve’s and walked towards Cheryl. “You’re wrong,” she said. “You didn’t stop being friends with me— _I_ stopped calling _you_ my friend. You’re not my friend—you never were. You’re a catty, pathetic wannabe. You’ve always wanted to be me and you’ll always try—but you’ll never succeed, because I’m the original and you’re the copy. And I’m done hanging around you girls. You can boast looks and status all you want, but you can’t boast originality—and you _certainly_ can’t brag about having an actual personality, good morals, or a real heart like Steve has,” she added fiercely. “So if _I_ ever see you speaking to me—or him—again…I’ll finish you. And don’t think I won’t,” she said coldly. “I haven’t been at the top for years without learning a thing or two on how to finish social climbers.”

Cheryl stared at her, apoplectic with rage, but she evidently had nothing to say because she sneered, “Like I said—have fun with your pathetic new ragtag friends,” and stormed away, Eliza and Denise throwing Alison shocked looks as they left. Alison knew Cheryl would take over her position at school and try to make life difficult for Alison now—but Alison didn’t really care about those things anymore.

Besides, she hadn’t been lying. If push _really_ came to shove…well, Alison still knew how to be a ruthless queen bee.

She slowly turned to face Steve, unsure of whether he would be disgusted by her outburst (or by her threats) but she was surprised to find him grinning. “What?” she asked self-consciously.

“That was something,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “You said you had no talents? Have you ever considered being a dictator?”

He meant this as a joke—Alison knew this—but the word “dictator” brought to mind Hitler, the man who had caused the war…that her brother was currently lost to, among countless other brothers, husbands, friends, and loved ones. She tried to smile but it came out a little twisted and she felt like her words were stuck in her throat. Steve looked bewildered for a moment, as if he couldn’t understand why she’d reacted this way—but then his eyes sparked and he said, “Oh—oh God, I didn’t even think of it that way—I’m sorry, Alison, I didn’t even _think_ at all, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know,” she said quickly, giving him a wobbly smile. “I know, it’s fine, it was a harmless mistake.”

“Let’s find somewhere to sit,” Steve said, coming forward and taking her arm, a concerned look on his face. “You look a little… Wow, I really am sorry, I’m an idiot.” He kept apologizing as he led Alison to a bench in a slightly secluded corner (the light above the bench had fused out so most people were avoiding it; it also had something sticky spilled on one end, glistening bright blue) until she threatened to smack him if he didn’t stop.

“You really love your brother, huh?” he asked, clasping his hands together and dangling them between his knees, looking at the ground.

“You sound surprised,” Alison said. “Siblings are supposed to love each other, you know.”

“I know, but I never had any,” he says. “And I think we both know that you and Jimmy are closer than most siblings are. Did you two ever fight?”

“Never.”

“See?”

Alison had to concede his point. She certainly adored Jimmy more than other people seemed to love their siblings. She couldn’t understand why other siblings were always squabbling. Why, Eliza even said she _hated_ her older brother and sister. Alison couldn’t even comprehend that type of existence. Jimmy was her protector, her guide, her best friend. He’d taught her to be a good person and he’d shielded her from their mother’s worst criticisms. It was no coincidence that in Jimmy’s absence, Alison had become a much colder person _and_ their mother’s tongue had gotten sharper.

“Tell me about him,” Steve said simply. Alison looked at him, surprised—she’d never had someone so openly ask such a simple yet enormous request—but when he nodded to show he was serious, she didn’t need to think twice to begin. She’d been dying, for months now, to speak about Jimmy: her worries and her fears, yes…but also her fond memories. She needed to share them with someone. She spoke hesitantly at first, gauging Steve’s reaction—was he still interested? Was he getting bored?—but he showed every sign of being a good listener (again) so she relaxed and began to speak more animatedly. She talked about how much she missed him, how lonely and silent the house was without his ridiculous jokes and loud, calm voice. She made Steve laugh quite a few times when she recalled awful pranks she’d played with Jimmy or ridiculous things that had happened to them in their youth.

She didn’t even realize she’d been speaking for quite some time—Steve interjecting every now and then to ask questions or remark in awe or sarcasm upon something interesting or absolutely ridiculous—until Bucky and Connie came up to them, Bucky saying, “ _There_ you are! We’ve been looking for you two dunderheads for ages!” He paused and looked at Alison, looking unsure on whether she’d accept being called a dunderhead by him, but she grinned and he relaxed. “Have you two been sitting here this whole time? Has he been yakking your ear off, Alison?” Bucky demanded. “When Steve gets going, he never stops.”

“Unfortunately, it was _me_ yakking Steve’s ear off,” Alison said apologetically. “I’m afraid I didn’t really let him speak.”

“You did!” Steve protested. “Besides, I was too busy laughing at your stories to speak.”

“Oh, did you tell a funny story?” Connie asked, bouncing on the tip of her toes slightly. “Share with us! I want to hear them!”

“Alright,” Alison said, amused. She barely knew Connie but already the girl seemed nicer and more genuine than Cheryl, Denise, and Eliza. She recounted a few of her funnier stories and as a result had Bucky and Connie in stitches as they all walked around, largely ignoring the contraptions because they were so invested in Alison’s stories. After a while, Connie grabbed Bucky’s hand and ran a few paces ahead with him and Steve and Alison hung back.

“Is Connie really that interested in…” Steve squinted to see what Connie was pulling Bucky towards. “‘Hovering Baseballs for Easier Baseball Practice’? I didn’t think she’d really care about that…”

Alison’s mouth fell open and she looked at Steve incredulously for a moment before going off in a peal of laughter. “Steve, you idiot! She doesn’t care about the baseball! She used it as an excuse to get Bucky alone!”

“Oh,” Steve said, looking sheepish. “I guess I don’t get women.”

“I don’t know how you came about that stunning conclusion,” Alison said innocently but Steve nudged her lightly with his elbow anyway.

They walked in silence for a few moments, looking around at some showpieces and taking in the crisp evening air and sounds of merriment around them, and then Steve began, “About what you said about not having any talents—”

“I know, I could be a dictator.” Alison rolled her eyes.

“No, _listen_ ,” he said. “I’m being serious this time. You’re really good at telling stories. I thought it the first time at the park when you were telling me about your mother, and I thought it again when you told me what happened at the club—and I thought it _again_ when you told me all those stories about Jimmy and you. You really know how to tell a swell story. You could be a writer, you know, or a journalist or something.”

“A writer?” Alison asked doubtfully. “I don’t know…” She’d never considered such a thing. In fact, no one had ever before told her that she was a good story-teller. She wondered for a moment if Steve was mad. “I don’t like writing,” she finally admitted. “My hand aches.”

“Every artist has to suffer a little bit for their craft,” Steve said seriously. “I like drawing and my hand aches after a while, too, but I keep at it because I like it and I’m good at it—or decent, anyway.”

“They don’t even let girls become journalists, really,” Alison protested.

Steve raised an eyebrow at her. “Would you really let that stop you? Alison ‘I’ll Finish You’ Lynden? You’re just looking for excuses, you know. But here, let me ask you something: do you _like_ telling stories?”

Alison thought for a moment and realized that yes…she really did like telling stories. She’d never thought of the words _story-teller_ or _writer_ in regards to herself before—she’d always just assumed she was self-centered and enjoyed talking—but when she thought about it, she really did enjoy telling (and hearing) a good, well-spoken story. “Yes, I do,” she said.

“Then you should consider it,” he said. “If not a journalist—which I think you could be, if you really wanted—then at least a writer. You _can’t_ tell me women can’t do that. And your stories are pretty great. I think they deserve to be told.”

Alison blushed. “Wow, that might…be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received.”

“And considering how many compliments you receive, _that’s_ a compliment to me too,” Steve said, grinning. Alison felt something fluttery in her stomach again as Steve smiled at her and she looked down at her nails, trying to ignore the feeling. Steve fell silent for a moment, clearly a little confused, but then Bucky and Connie motioned to them in the distance and they caught up with them again.

They watched a small fifteen-minute show by a man named Howard Stark who’d invented a hovering car (it didn’t actually work) and then afterwards decided they’d perhaps go dancing. They walked through a small, partially open-air building that was filled with stalls trying to recruit people for various things and Alison noticed a few army recruitment posters on the walls as they walked past. She shivered. She still didn’t get it—men and their need to fight, kill, bleed. She’d never been to war but from Jimmy’s private letters to her months ago, she got the sense that war was not the gloried thing young men thought it to be but dirty, disgusting, dark. She wished they could see that. She wished she could show them…but of course, _she’d_ never been to war so she wasn’t in any place to do so.

They got about twenty feet out of the building, when Bucky suddenly said, “Where’s Steve gone?”

They stopped and turned around to see Steve still loitering back in the building’s large hall, staring at… _One of the army recruitment posters_ , Alison thought, her heart sinking. _Blast._ “I’ll go get him,” Bucky said. “You ladies stay right here.” He winked at them and then sauntered off to Steve. Connie giggled and said, “He’s so dashing, isn’t he? A sergeant! I never imagined.”

“Yes, he’s very…” Alison looked at Steve. “Dashing.”

They watched as Steve and Bucky had an apparently-heated discussion for a few moments (Alison couldn’t hear it but she could guess ten to one that it was about Steve wanting to enlist) and then Bucky slowly walked back towards them sans Steve. “He’s not really feeling up to dancing right now,” Bucky said. “But how about I take you ladies myself?”

“Oh—um—thanks,” said Alison, “but I think I’ll stay here as well…” Her voice trailed off under Bucky’s twinkling, somewhat knowing gaze and her face suddenly felt hot.

“Keep Steve company?” Bucky asked.

“No,” she said indignantly. “I just—hate dancing.” This was complete nonsense, of course. Alison loved dancing and she was good at it.

“Right,” he said smoothly. “I’ve heard that about you. Well, suit yourself. Join us if you feel up to it later.” He grabbed Connie around the waist and they both walked off after waving goodbye to Alison. Alison watched them go and made sure they were both gone before she hurried back into the covered hall, where—

 _Where did he go?_ She spun around, looking every which way, but Steve was nowhere to be seen. _That’s strange_ , she thought, puzzled. _Wasn’t he here_ just _a moment ago?_ Not having any clue what to do now, she leaned against the wall and folded her arms, hoping Steve would show up. She fielded off a few wolf-whistles and offers to go “have a nice time, dollface,” from some boys who were either drunk, too young for her, or both. Eventually Steve showed up, stepping out from a door at the end of the hall. He put his hands in his pockets and began slowly, almost dazedly, walking down the hall. He might have slammed into a wall had Alison not called, “Steve!” and gotten his attention.

He made his way over to her. “Alison—you’re still here? But Bucky said…”

“I didn’t want to go without you,” she told him honestly. Steve looked gratified. “Where did you go?” she asked. Steve suddenly got a shifty look on his face, his eyes sliding past Alison’s face to the wall behind her. Alison scowled. “Steve, I’m not an idiot. You can’t put me off that easily. Why, were you doing something _bad_?”

“No!” Steve said immediately. “Just—I’m not supposed to tell anyone about it.”

“Well, it must be important because you chose to do it instead of spending Bucky’s last night at home with him and Connie,” Alison said patiently. “So go on, spit it out. You know you can trust me.”

There was an awkward, awful moment then, when Steve looked at Alison and she looked at him and it was as if he were wondering something and Alison thought, _Oh my god—maybe he_ doesn’t _trust me_ , and her cheeks flooded with color. But then Steve sighed and said, “Okay, you’re right,” and Alison felt her shoulders sag with relief. Thank God he’d said so; the alternative situation was too humiliating to think about…

Steve suggested he walk her home and tell her about it because he didn’t want anyone overhearing. This sparked a few fears in Alison’s mind for a moment that perhaps he was a spy for the enemies—otherwise why else the need for so much secrecy?—but then she remembered she was thinking about _Steve Rogers_ of all people: the least likely person on Earth to betray his country. She agreed and they left the exposition. Steve, looking around to make sure the streets were quiet (which they were), began to explain.

He and Bucky had argued about Steve wanting to join the army ( _I knew it_ , Alison groaned mentally) and Steve had said something that had apparently caught the attention of a man named Abraham Erskine. He was a doctor, a scientist of sorts, who worked with the U.S. army as a part of a program called the Scientific Strategic Reserve. Steve wasn’t quite sure was this was, but Dr. Erskine had been impressed by something in Steve (Steve himself looked a bit bewildered as he told this part of the story, as if he couldn’t comprehend someone being impressed by him) and had offered Steve a chance to be a part of a secret experiment which would allow him to enlist and fight in the war.

Steve stopped abruptly here and looked at Alison expectantly. Her mouth fell open and she was at a loss for words for a moment. “You mean to tell me that you don’t know what this program is—or what this secret experiment entails—or how any of it will help you enter the army, or what it’ll do to you—but you still _agreed_?” she screeched.

“Shhh!” Steve hushed her frantically, looking around nervously. “Not so loud!”

“Steve, this is crazy!” she hissed. “You can’t do this!”

“Of course I can,” he said obstinately, a mulish expression on his face.

Alison groaned. “You are—you are such a _boy_. This is ridiculous. What if it’s illegal? What if it hurts you?”

“It’s not illegal, it’s a legitimate program sanctioned by the U.S. Army,” Steve argued, “and I can’t see how it would _hurt_ me. I’m already as—as weak as I could ever be. If it helps me enlist, how could it _hurt_ me? The only way I could get hurt further was if I got paralyzed or something and I hardly think the experiment will do that.”

“But what if the experiment turns you into some kind of—mindless killing robot machine?” Alison demanded. Steve stared at her. She blushed. “What? I’ve read some comic books. You never know what could happen.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “It’s not going to turn me into a robot killing machine. If that was the experiment, I think they’d pick someone bigger and stronger to use.”

“What if I tell Bucky about this?” Alison threatened. “He’d put a stop to this.”

“He can’t,” Steve said, smiling grimly. “He leaves tomorrow and I’m going to meet Dr. Erskine on Tuesday for the experiment.”

They had reached Alison’s house now. Alison stood there, rubbing her arms against the chill and didn’t know what to say or how to meet Steve’s eyes. She felt like this plan was absolute madness but… “Promise me you’ll let me come with you when you go to this experiment,” she said. “Just in case you _do_ get turned into a robot killing machine. Then at least _someone_ will know what happened to Steve Rogers.” She said it in a joking tone but she meant it: what if something bad happened to him? Would anyone ever find out?

Would anyone even care? Did Steve have any other friends or family at all? There was still so much Alison didn’t know about him, so much she wanted to know.

Steve gave a crooked smile that said he was thinking along the same lines and said, “Not sure anyone would be raising alarms for me—but sure, you can come with me. You’ll have to wait outside, though.”

Alison told him that would be fine. They both said goodbye and looked awkwardly at each other for a moment, as if unsure on how to end the night—a handshake? A hug?—and Alison ended their misery by rushing into her house and leaving Steve standing on the sidewalk.

Her parents had already gone to bed. Alison quickly changed into her nightdress and then paced her room, her mind spinning with thoughts. Everything that had happened tonight—everything she had felt—what Steve had just told her—it all bounced around in her head with dizzying force. She felt lost and confused. Jimmy wasn’t here to talk to and Steve wasn’t here right now either. She needed to let this out…

 _“You really know how to tell a swell story. You could be a writer, you know, or a journalist or something… And your stories are pretty great. I think they deserve to be told.”_ Steve’s words from earlier popped into Alison’s head and she froze, thinking about them. She’d never put her words or thoughts to paper before but…there was a first time for everything, right? She dug through her drawers and found a blank composition book. Sitting at her desk, she flipped open to the first fresh page. It looked like an inviting new canvas, a new beginning. Biting her lip, she put her pen to the paper and began pouring her heart out.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’ve clearly taken a few liberties with the facts in this chapter. In my story, Steve receives the formula without going to the training camp (because that would mean he’s already in the army then, and that just didn’t work for the story) and he receives it on the outskirts of NYC.

_Steve Rogers is a genius._ This was the thought that reverberated in Alison’s head constantly over the next two days. She wrote almost constantly, anything that came to mind: her frustrations, her fears, her joys, her thoughts. Things that had happened to her. Memories she wanted—or needed—to remember. Sometimes she wrote them in a diary first person point-of-view format and sometimes she wrote them in a third person, story format: _One year, when Alison was twelve-years-old, something extraordinary happened to her…_ Her hand cramped and her back ached from hunching over at her desk so much, but she found she couldn’t stop. To let everything out in writing…it was beautiful. She’d never before realized how much she enjoyed writing when it was her _own_ stories she was telling, and not simply essays for school. Steve Rogers was truly a genius for seeing this in her when no one else—not even Jimmy—had seen it in her.

Her parents thought she had gone mad. She knew because she’d heard them talking in low murmurs, her father concerned, her mother irritated. Alison seemed to be making a spectacle of herself lately. What had happened at the Red Lioness hadn’t gotten out but the fact that she’d _gone_ to the Red Lioness had definitely gotten out. Then she’d been behaving strangely in school. And _then_ she had been seen with Steve Rogers, both around town (when she had walked with him to his home) and at the expo. Her parents didn’t know who Steve Rogers was in the slightest but they gathered, from the tone of the gossiping adults around them, that he was a runty kid who was not of Alison’s caliber or class. To them, anyway. And now here she was, locking herself in her room for hours at a time when normally she would have been out with her girlfriends. But neither of her parents could bring themselves to ask her: her father because he was, for all his love for his daughter, a weak parent and her mother because she was too proud to ask her daughter about her feelings.

Alison may have thought that she was as bad as her mother but the truth was, Alison outshone both of her parents and would only continue to do so.

Alison struggled with how to talk Steve out of his foolishness but she couldn’t come up with anything, so when Steve showed up at her door bright and early on Tuesday morning before school, she had to go with him without any coherent argument against it. The experiment was scheduled during schooling hours (Dr. Erskine, it seemed, did not care about such trivial things such as high school attendance) so Steve and Alison were both going to have to skip school. Steve had no problem with this, seeing as how he had no parents and wasn’t planning on finishing the school year anyway. Alison, however, wasn’t as fortunate. She realized distastefully that she’d have to skip school with no excuse and suffer the consequences.

 _Oh well_ , she thought heavily. _I’m already in everyone’s bad books—what’s one more mark against me? Besides, I’ve always had perfect attendance. I’ll come up with something. Maybe I’ll tell them I got too overwhelmed about Jimmy and couldn’t make it to school._ Her stomach twisted at the thought of using Jimmy like this—but she figured that Jimmy himself would approve of what she was doing. Jimmy would never have dreamed of letting a friend walk into something unknown all alone.

She had no idea where the experiment was (Steve rattled off some address that meant nothing to directionally-challenged Alison) but she followed Steve silently, trusting that his internal map was better than hers. Neither of them had enough money to hail a cab and both of them knew it, so it wasn’t even mentioned. They walked for two and a half hours, heading deeper into the city and then towards the outskirts on the other side, and Alison was excessively glad she’d worn comfortable shoes and a casual outfit because her feet hurt and she was mildly sweating by the time they arrived.

They’d largely walked in silence, Alison’s stomach churning at the thought of what Steve was about to do, trying to desperately figure out ways to stop him. She felt near tears. She couldn’t help but feel like Steve was walking into a lion’s den—what he was doing…this experiment…what if it changed him for the worse? What if it hurt him? Or worse…what if it _worked_ and he went to war? Alison felt disloyal for thinking it, but she really couldn’t imagine Steve surviving war. Steve, for his part, was silent and looked completely lost in thought. Alison remembered that Bucky had left on Sunday and wondered if Steve’s silence had to do with his best friend being gone.

“Well, we’re here,” Steve said finally, jolting Alison out of her feverish half-formed plans. She lifted her head, golden locks falling into her eyes. She impatiently pushed them away and saw that they were on the northwestern part of the city, on the far outskirts. The buildings around them all looked industrial: warehouses, factories, and the like. Dirty-faced workers passed them and she could see, in the far distance, a body of water—a river. Some type of industrial, shipping port? She had no idea. She’d never been to this part of the city before. But it didn’t look like the kind of place where top-secret experiments were conducted.

“Wonderful,” she said, her voice hitching slightly. She looked up at the warehouse they stood in front of, a tall white thing, and said, “This is the place?”

“This is the back. You’ll have to stay in the back,” Steve explained apologetically. “I didn’t tell—I mean, I wasn’t supposed to tell—I wasn’t supposed to bring anyone with me. So I don’t want anyone to see you and give you trouble. I’ll go in the front and you can wait back here for me—although you can go home early if you get tired. Though I didn’t…I forgot that means you’d have to walk through the city alone…” He frowned to himself and Alison couldn’t help but smile a little bit at his chivalry.

She looked at Steve and tried to smile wider for his sake. “Nervous?”

His expression was blank. “No.”

She searched his face and noticed how his blue eyes seemed a shade darker than normal and that his hands looked tense. “Yes, you are,” she said softly.

“Fine, maybe a little,” he conceded. “But it needs to be done.”

“It doesn’t _need_ to be done,” she said a little irritably. “You’re just choosing to do it.”

Steve looked surprised. “What you mean?”

Alison’s throat felt thick. She didn’t know what to say.

“I thought you understood why I have to do this,” Steve said, looking disappointed. “I thought—”

“I do,” Alison said, her voice coming out rough. “I just…don’t like it.”

“Why?” Steve demanded.

“Because—because what if…what if you get hurt, or what if does something strange to you?” Alison babbled. “Or what if it goes wrong somehow? If we knew _anything_ about it—but we don’t—and I know we already had this discussion but I just can’t help but—you know, worry?”

Steve stared at her for a moment, as if surprised by her speech, and then he smiled slightly self-consciously and said, “But we already talked about this. Don’t worry, I’m going to be—”

“And I don’t want you to go to war.” The words burst from Alison’s chest like a heavy breath. She was unable to hold them back. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t say it—she _couldn’t_ say it—but it was that stupid small smile that had just played on his face. It had reminded Alison of how kind, how young, how _breakable_ he was. He was just a young man playing at warrior except he didn’t even have the defenses that most young men had—such as properly working lungs—and the thought of him going to war made Alison feel sick. She’d lose him. She was a selfish girl—he didn’t need her and he needed to go to war for his own reasons, but she didn’t want to let him go. She hadn’t even noticed it, but tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“I don’t understand,” Steve said blankly. “I don’t—wait, are you _crying_? Why are you—what—” Even as he stammered, he was blindly patting his pockets for his handkerchief, which Alison realized she’d never given back to him. “Why would you care if I go to war?” he asked, bewildered. “You never said anything before—”

Alison kissed him. She’d actually never kissed a boy before (contrary to popular belief) and she knew it was horribly forward and untoward of her—a girl making the first move? Who ever heard of such a thing—and she had no idea what she was doing, but she wanted to shut him up and also show him what she meant. She just leaned forward, clasped his shoulders and kissed him. It was a light kiss, nothing serious or wildly passionate—but it was definitely something. She rocked back on her heels and clasped her hands behind her back, face aflame. Steve looked as if he had been smashed over the head with a baseball bat. He was frozen, face pink and white, staring at Alison in utter shock.

“What—” he finally began.

“I like you, you stupid boy,” Alison said, shaking her head, still crying but smiling at the absolute strangeness of the situation. “I don’t know, maybe I even _love_ you. I’ve never been in love before, but I think it might feel something like this. All I know is that I hated you at first—but I hated you for stupid reasons that had to do more with my _own_ problems than you. And when I got to know you…I really like you, Steve. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re the first person who’s ever really listened to me, and I also think you’re pretty sweet and a gentleman. And you’re cute too,” she added shyly, unable to look him in the face. Who had she become? Kissing boys first and telling boys as short and skinny as her that she found them cute. “And I really can’t stand—I can’t—I didn’t want you—I don’t want you to get _hurt_. So I thought maybe if I told you how I felt—”

Before Alison could finish, Steve kissed her. It was just a soft press on the lips, the same as what she’d done to him, but it electrified her every nerve ending and also made her feel soft and gooey all at the same time. He pulled back and then let out a sudden, short laugh and said, “I’ve never done that before.”

“Neither had I,” Alison said a little breathlessly.

Steve’s eyes twinkled. “Yeah, but I bet that was stranger for me than you. _Me_ , kissing _Alison Lynden_?”

“Absolutely not!” Alison said. “ _Me_ kissing _Steve Rogers_? Definitely stranger!”

“There’s the argumentative girl I like,” Steve said jokingly.

Alison’s heart lifted and she looked at him. “So you…you do like me?”

“Me? Like you?” Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you kidding me? I’ve liked you for a long time now. I always thought—well, you’ve always been pretty to me but I always thought you were interesting. And after getting to know you…you’re beautiful on the inside too. You’re smart and sharp and there’s something very real about you. Never thought you’d like _me_.”

Alison felt like someone had taken her breath away. She hadn’t thought she offered Steve much of anything—but it turned out that he liked her as well, and liked her for who she was. He had just given her the greatest gift anyone had ever given Alison. The only thing that could trump this was if Jimmy suddenly came home alive and well.

Steve suddenly looked at his wristwatch and said, “Damn it! Oh—sorry,” he said, looking up at Alison. “But I’m late, I should have gone in fifteen minutes ago—”

It felt like someone had punched her in the gut. First she couldn’t breathe for delight, now she couldn’t breathe for shock. “You’re still…you’re still going?” she asked, trying to ignore the pain that was building in her stomach.

Steve beamed. “Why not? I was already excited to do this—and now you’ve just made me even happier. Today is turning out to be a great day. I’ll see you in a little while, hopefully,” he said, slowly beginning to back away in the direction of the warehouse behind them.

“Wait,” Alison called desperately. “Don’t do this! You don’t know what could happen!”

But Steve only laughed. Clearly Alison’s confession had lit something in him, added a pep in his step that could only come from a man being told that the girl he liked liked him back as well. “You worry too much!” he called. “It’ll be fine!” And then he turned and took off, jogging around the warehouse to the proper front entrance. Alison watched him go, feeling weak. She’d confessed her feelings—bared her heart in front of him—and he’d still gone.

He’d still gone.

She leaned against the warehouse crying for a while but Alison Lynden was a tough girl and tears only took her so far. Eventually she wiped away her cheeks and eyes and spent a long time breathing deeply in and out, trying to calm herself down and think rationally.

_He’s right—it’s a government-sanctioned program and experiment. It’s not some random hooligans or some mad scientist—it’s professional people._

_They wouldn’t have picked such a small guy if they wanted to create some kind of mindless fighting machine._

_Maybe the experiment will cure his asthma and illnesses. He’s always looking peaky. Maybe it’ll fix some of his health conditions. That’ll be nice, won’t it?_

_Or maybe it’s something else. He said it’ll allow him to go to war—but he didn’t say as_ what _he would get to go as. Maybe it’s some sort of vitamin or pill that…enhances brain function or something. Maybe he’ll be a typist. Maybe this Dr. Erskine fellow just felt bad for him and wanted to let him play a role, even a small role._

But deep down, Alison knew these were all wrong. The government and U.S. army wouldn’t waste time and money doing a small-scale experiment on a physically-weak man just to allow him to play a _small role_ in the war to make him feel good. No…whatever was happening inside was going to change Steve. Alison just didn’t know how.

Time passed and she thought about how her parents would react when they found out she skipped school—for surely, by now, they would know. Someone would have rung her father at work or sent word to her mother. She realized she didn’t really care; the fear of her parents paled in comparison to the fear over what was being done to Steve inside the warehouse. Several times she pressed her ear to the wall, trying to see if she could hear anything inside—but of course, she couldn’t.

She didn’t know why it was taking so long. What could they possibly be doing? She imagined that there would be some paperwork, perhaps some preliminary tests run… She really had no idea but common sense told her as much. And perhaps the experiment itself took a very long time… Some working men whistled at her as they passed her, holding crates and boxes, but Alison took no notice of them.

At one point, she thought she heard a few muffled bangs from inside the building and some shouts from the other side. She pressed her ear to the building and listened but the walls were too thick. She felt uneasy but tried to rationalize that she was in an industrial area: there were likely to be some accidents and some workmen shouting while going about their workday. There was no reason to be worried…even though the bangs had sounded suspiciously like the gunfire she sometimes heard on her father’s cowboy radio shows…

Alison wanted to wait for Steve but time passed and she realized she _had_ to get home or her parents might really pull out all the stops this time to bring her home. She didn’t care about being punished but she didn’t want the entire neighborhood knowing she was missing. The more people that knew, the more eyes scrutinizing her when she went out, and she wanted to retain some privacy so she could come and go as she pleased…especially since she had kissed Steve and didn’t exactly know what would happen now between them. Would they go steady? Was she ready to show the world that? She thought and realized deep down…that yes, she was. But did it even _matter_ , since he was going to war apparently?

She gave it another twenty minutes but Steve didn’t show. She hurried around to the front of the warehouse. The doors were thrown open and the inside looked ominously dark. She felt a prickle of unease. _Something doesn’t feel right about this…_ Cautiously, she made her way inside the building, creating an excuse in her head for if she got caught. However, she didn’t run into anyone; the entire building seemed abandoned of people. Lights were on inside and she could see papers on some desks and even a mug of coffee sitting on a table near the stairs—so people had definitely _been_ here, and recently. But where were they now?

She climbed the stairs to the next level (there were only two, very high levels in the building) and walked down the hall to a door left open. She passed through it and gasped, halting in her place. She was in a large room that looked like some sort of lab or testing facility: a raised portion held a small glass room with a control panel inside and a set of stairs led to a slightly lowered portion that also held another long control panel on one side…and a tall machine with straps— _Straps that look like they were meant to hold a human down_ , she thought, swallowing—standing in the middle, looking eerily like a coffin. But even more shocking…her eyes followed the trail of shattered glass that led down the steps to—

She let out a scream when she realized that there was a man laying on the floor, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling, a pool of blood underneath him. Her feet felt frozen to the floor for a moment but then she caught leave of her senses and turned and fled, hysteria rising in her throat.

_Coffin-like machine with straps and opened hinges and lid—_

_Control panel—_

_Shattered glass—_

_DEAD MAN ON THE FLOOR—_

Her thoughts couldn’t take hold. She felt nauseous as she sprinted out of the warehouse, almost falling out of her not-suitable-for-running-at-all shoes and then kept running out of this blasted warehouse district. She couldn’t run _all_ the way home (for it was simply too far) so eventually she slowed her pace to a walk—but a very fast walk, nervously looking behind her the whole time. Her fear propelled her so that she made it home in two hours and she burst through her front door like Hell and Hades and all his hounds were after her. School had ended an hour ago and clearly her parents had received word that Alison had never showed, because they immediately leaped up from their seats in the family room (where they had been sitting with tense, angry, worried expressions) and her mother demanded, “Really, Alison? Again? Where have you been?”

Alison burst into tears.

“Good Lord, the girl’s a drama queen,” her mother said icily.

“Hold your tongue, woman,” her father growled. “Can’t you see the girl’s upset? What’s wrong, Alison?” he asked kindly. He was definitely displeased with her skipping school but he never could stand seeing his daughter, who looked so much like a fairytale princess, crying. “What’s made you do this, my dear?”

Alison could only sob out, “J-J-Jimmy!”

What she meant was that she wanted Jimmy near her so he could comfort her in the face of what was _clearly_ Steve’s demise—but her parents took it to mean that Alison had somehow heard some news about Jimmy that they hadn’t. “ _What_?” her mother shrieked. “Jimmy? Alison, is he—?!” and then she fainted.

While Alison’s father rushed to help his wife to a sofa and splash some cool water on her face, Alison managed to explain through her tears that Jimmy was alive (well, as far she knew anyway) and that she had skipped school because she missed him so much. Her father looked relieved that his only son wasn’t dead and also tormented at all the overly-dramatic women he had to deal with in his house and told Alison to go rest in her room while he attended to her mother.

Alison calmed down in her room, taking a bath and then writing about her day in her journal. It was the only way she could try and make sense of it. The shattered glass—the dead man—the positively Frankenstein-ish device she’d seen—Steve not showing up to meet her…it all pointed to one awful conclusion: something had gone dreadfully wrong. Someone had been killed. Had others been killed? Had _Steve_ killed them, perhaps changed and twisted by the experiment? Where was he…or his body?

Alison definitely had a wild imagination when she was panicked.

She felt better after writing everything out. Nothing could be done tonight (she certainly couldn’t sneak out to Steve’s house to see if he somehow made it home; her parents would be watching her like hawks) but she resolved to immediately go to Steve’s house tomorrow to see if he was alive and had made it home…and was still human. Sending a quick prayer to the Lord that all was well with Steve and Jimmy, Alison climbed into bed even though it was early afternoon and fell asleep.

* * *

 

She was woken up by light taps at her window. She’d been so exhausted by her long walks and fright that she’d slept all afternoon and evening and her parents had let her. Her eyes opened after the fourth tap—they were coming in random order, as if someone were throwing rocks at her window—and she looked at her clock. It was ten o’clock at night. She really _had_ been tired… She got up and checked the hallway outside her room. Her house was dark and silent. Then she tip-toed to her window and opened it slowly. She supposed she should have been afraid by some unknown person throwing rocks at her window, but really, if it was an intruder or a thief, would they really choose to first wake the people sleeping in the house? She rather thought not.

She looked down from her window. It was too dark to see who was out there but she waited. Sure enough, a moment later a pebble hit her face and she recoiled, whisper-yelling, “Ouch!”

“Sorry!” came Steve’s whispered apology and her heart seemed to simultaneously explode, soar, and sink with relief. It resulted in a very peculiar sensation in Alison’s chest.

“You’re fine?” she whispered from her window, eyes searching the dark for Steve to no avail.

“Come down and see for yourself,” he called quietly. “I’ll wait at the streetlight down the street.” Alison could hear the smile in his voice and this made her feel hopeful; he sounded like himself and he didn’t sound upset…maybe he really was perfectly fine.

She closed her window and looked down at her thin nightgown. Besides being unsuitable for the chilly night air, it clearly revealed her figure. No, this wouldn’t do. She tied on her thick nightgown and slid her feet into soft house slippers. Then she silently padded down the stairs and to the front door. She needn’t have been so quiet because her father had given her mother some whiskey to knock her out and had indulged in some (or quite a bit) himself, but Alison didn’t know this. She quietly closed her front door and, shivering against the cool night air, wrapped her arms around herself and set off down the street to the glowing orange streetlamp five houses down. She could see a dark silhouette standing under the light.

However, as she got closer, her unease grew stronger and her footsteps got slower. This silhouette…it was a man’s silhouette…but it wasn’t Steve’s shape. She hadn’t looked closely from her house as she neared, she realized how tall this man was—and how broad-shouldered and powerfully-built. He was standing slightly beyond the light’s dim glow so all she could see was his dark shape standing stock still…staring at _her_. Her mouth went dry and she stopped walking. This was definitely not Steve, it was some other man who was standing far too still for him to just be a normal loiterer. Plus, where had Steve gone?

Had this man done something to Steve in the time that it had taken her to bundle up for the cold? Someone had killed the man in the warehouse—maybe it was _this_ man. Alison decided she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She began backing up, trying not to show her fear or scream— _and the man began to move towards her._ She whirled to run but even before she could take a few steps, she heard the man run after her and reach her far too quickly (she had been at least twenty feet away from him!) and grab her arm, yanking her around firmly yet gently and saying, “Alison, wait—!”

She froze at Steve’s voice, staring in shock at the man who stood in front of her. The man…who had spoken in Steve’s voice. She was so dazed that she didn’t even notice the man gently tug her back towards the streetlamp’s light. She couldn’t have resisted even if she tried; he was much stronger than her. The light threw his face into relief and Alison’s knees buckled. Steve swept an arm behind her before she could faint and he chuckled self-consciously. “I know—it takes a little getting used to, right?”

“You…think…so?” Alison breathed, mouth fallen open, staring at Steve in amazement and shock. He righted her and she took a few steps back, taking him in, unable to speak or even breathe much. He was tall now, well over six feet tall, and broad-shouldered. His figure was muscular and extremely powerfully-built, with bulging arm muscles and a broad chest that tapered into a narrower waist, giving him a V-shape. He still had his floppy blond hair and blue eyes (though they almost looked navy in the night light) and straight nose but his jawline was stronger, allowing his features to fit perfectly on his face. He looked like what most men aspired to be: physically fit in every way and extremely handsome, to boot. It was like his features had been born to work with this new, stronger facial structure and body. He looked like the real-life version of Adonis that Alison had seen in some textbooks. However…

 _He’s not the Steve I fell in love with_ , Alison thought numbly, hardly registering that she had just admitted that she loved Steve. That hardly seemed relevant at the moment. He was handsome and strong and tall and—well, basically like any fairytale Prince Charming, yes. But where was _her_ Steve? Shorter than her, slender, with a slightly beaky face and cheeks far too pale for this world, looking defeated yet full of life all at once. The boy who looked delicate yet had an inner strength Alison knew was tougher—and more stubborn—than a lot of the guys out there. That was the Steve she knew, that was the Steve whose physical presence she had grown accustomed to. This Steve…he was too big, too hard-looking. Alison felt like a doll next to him, like he could kill her with one blow if he wanted. The feeling was uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked anxiously, eyes raking her face. “Is it too strange? Do I look bad? I sure _feel_ better, but…I don’t know. You seem…scared,” he ended in a low voice. “Do I scare you?”

“Of course not,” Alison said instinctively. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’d never be scared by the likes of you.”

Steve grinned and Alison’s heart lifted. His smile was the very same, as were his eyes. She stepped forward and touched his face lightly, searching it. “You really are…the same,” she marveled.

“Just hardier,” Steve joked. “Not so easy to beat up now. Eddie McVeigh better watch out.”

Alison imagined the new Steve Rogers getting into a fight with Eddie McVeigh now—he would _pulverize_ Eddie—and she couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter. Once she laughed, Steve looked relieved, as if she were finally herself again. He led her over to a bench across the street and he told her everything that had happened: Filling out paperwork and having to wait around for quite some time while Dr. Erskine introduced him to people’s whose names he forgot right away. Getting injected with what was called a super-soldier serum, getting into the machine, feeling immense pain and heat and light…and emerging like this. Seeing Dr. Erskine shot before he had been in his new body even five minutes and chasing the attacker through the streets.

“And I was _fast_ , Alison,” Steve said in a low, slightly awed voice. “Faster and stronger than any normal man.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Alison said, feeling slightly hysterical. “So not only are you in peak physical form, you’re even _stronger_ than that. What did you say you were called? A super-soldier?”

Steve nodded. “It’s kind of made me a…superhuman, I guess. Stronger, faster. Apparently I need to eat a lot to keep my energy up. Oh, and I can’t get drunk anymore.” He laughed. “Not that I got drunk a lot before but you know, at least I’d had the option.”

They were silent for a few moments and Alison looked at her hands, feeling oddly shy around him. He was the same Steve he always had been but his presence was so much more forceful… “There’s another thing I like about my new strength,” Steve said suddenly.

“What?” She looked up at him.

“That I can do this.” And he suddenly stood up, grabbing Alison before she could protest or even shriek and swung her in the air, spinning her in a circle quickly before putting her down. While her head was still spinning, he dipped her down as if they were dancing and kissed her. If Alison had thought their previous kisses were amazing, this one went beyond those. It made her feel like she had been set on fire but in a good way. When he finally let her go, Alison had to sit down on the bench because she didn’t feel capable of standing and let out a stifled gasp and Steve grinned. “I like being able to make you do that,” he teased.

Alison looked up at Steve and felt like her heart might swell and burst. She would miss her small Steve Rogers—after all, he was the one she had befriended and fallen for—but she still had that same man…he was just more durable and less likely to succumb to a life-threatening illness now. And that was definitely a good thing. _How did I get so lucky?_ she wondered.

 _You let go of judgments and inhibitions and tried new things_ , her subconscious lightly told her. _Some lessons well learned, don’t you think?_

“So there’s no chance you’d stay behind and just—stay with me?” she asked when he sat down next to her, grabbing his hands. But she knew his answer before he spoke it, so when he shook his head, smiling sadly, she kissed his hands and said, “Then I’ll wait for you, Steve Rogers. Don’t forget me when you’re at war.”

“I could never do that, Alison Lynden,” he said.

           

           

 


	8. Chapter 8

Unfortunately for Steve (and fortunately for Eddie McVeigh), he wasn’t in town long enough to get revenge on any of the boys who had beat him up unfairly over the years. Alison didn’t really think for a moment that he would have done it anyway because Steve wasn’t the type to spring a surprise revenge attack—but he admitted it would be funny to see their faces if they saw the new Steve challenge them.

Steve left on Thursday. From what he told Alison, he was to don some sort costume or suit and play a mascot to raise American morale. His smile had been rather forced when he told her this because it, no doubt, wasn’t anywhere close to the dangerous, life-risking things he rather would have been doing, but Alison thanked her lucky stars that Steve would be kept away from danger. It was probably selfish of her to do so, when so many other girls’ boyfriends and beaus and husbands were out there risking their lives and Steve was a _super soldier_ …but Alison couldn’t help it. She already had one man in the war to worry about; she didn’t want to have to pray for another one.

Alison went to see him off, since he didn’t really have anyone else. They didn’t have a sappy, emotional farewell since, despite their feelings for each other, they really hadn’t known each other long enough to carry on dramatically (though Alison doubted that would ever be either of their styles). Steve joked, “You’re going to have to finish the project without me,” but she told him, “Forget the project. You know I’ll do perfect on it. You stay alive for me. Come home, please.” And he said, “Sure thing,” in a lighthearted way that had the opposite effect on Alison’s heart. He kissed her once and then he was off, clambering into a rattling truck full of boys calling out the girls waving and blowing kisses by the side, saying goodbye to their men.

For a while after Steve was gone, Alison didn’t know what to do with herself. Her parents punished her for skipping school but they seemed to sense something had changed in their daughter—she seemed sort of sad and quiet and reflective—and they eased up on her because her grades, her behavior, her school attendance…everything was exemplary. She studied and she spent a lot of time in locked up in her room doing nothing. She didn’t weep or wail but she felt lost and sad. She’d lost her only confidante and now she had no one. And then, during this period, they received the news: Jimmy had been killed in action.

Alison went into a tailspin of sadness. Her whole life had always felt so forced and fake and wrong and then, for a few shining weeks, things had seemed different. She’d had hope. She’d changed herself. And now…nothing seemed to matter. She slept more. She ate less. Her grades stayed exemplary. No one talked to her at school anymore. First she had seemed like a pariah because the news of her rejecting Cheryl (who was enjoying her position as the top dog now), Denise, and Eliza in favor of Steve had spread. Then people were afraid to say anything to her because her brother died. But people are fickle and sympathy is short-lasting and people again began to think of Alison as odd. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been at the beginning of the school year. No one could think of what had happened—only that she’d begun changing when she was assigned to be Steve Rogers’ partner. More than one teacher had asked Alison if she was okay. She always smiled politely and told them she was just fine. They believed her because it was easier to do that than to look into her empty eyes and see that everything was, in fact, _not_ fine.

After a month like this, Alison had a dream that she was at the technology expo again—but instead of being with Steve, she was with Jimmy. They rode the Ferris wheel and Jimmy looked at her and told her, “It’s okay to live life, you know, Ali.” He said some other things that Alison couldn’t recall when she woke up but those words stuck with her: _It’s okay to live life, you know, Ali._ Jimmy. The only person who had ever called her “Ali.” It felt like he’d send her a message from the grave: it was time to start living again. Moping had never been the Alison Lynden way, after all.

She tried harder, after that. She still felt empty a lot and lonely but she filled her days at Flora’s, teaching her relatives, and she sought out Connie from the exposition and they tentatively became friends, both girls bonded in shared fears about their boys overseas. She found that Connie was actually quite a lovely girl, charming and extremely funny, and in that way, Alison suddenly gained a new friend. She did a lot of writing, especially as the holidays approached and then passed. It was the most difficult Christmas she and her family had ever gone through. There was little money for any presents and even less enthusiasm for any joy or cheer. It seemed her mother might never recover from Jimmy’s loss. She was, at any rate, off of Alison’s back, for which Alison was grateful for.

She followed news about Steve obsessively. He was named Captain America and he traveled around the U.S. dressed in a red, white, and blue spandex uniform of the stars and stripes with dancing showgirls, raising morale for the citizens, and then he headed overseas to do the same for the boys fighting for the country. Comics were written about him and toys and merchandise were created—anything to keep spirit up, keep patriotism up, and earn some simple money that went towards the war effort. Alison bought every single Captain America comic book that came out. When he went overseas, news about him was harder to find because there were more pressing matters to report on from overseas, but she still managed to find tidbits that told her that he was alive. And this was what kept her going. For days at a time she would have no idea what had happened to him, where he was, what he was doing, if he was thinking about her…but then she’d find some small bit of news that would tide her over until the next bit. She tried to write to him but was told it was too difficult to get letters up in his area of northeastern Europe now. He was beyond the bonds where letters could safely be delivered.

She wished she could tell him one of her stories. She couldn’t send it at the moment—but she decided to write it for him and save it until he came home. So she began a story. Not quite a novel, but a long short-story of sorts, about a girl who felt like nothing but a face and was cold and unhappy with herself and her world—until she met a boy who challenged all her notions about himself and about her own self as well. And the rest, or so they say, is history.

But then everything came to a screeching halt. In January, just when she had begun to slowly come to life after Jimmy’s death, came the news: Captain America had mercilessly sacrificed himself for his country. He was dead. His body hadn’t been found but he had been, without a doubt, killed in action. Alison fainted when she saw the newspaper headlines, a crowd of alarmed people gathering around her until she came to fifteen minutes later. Then she ran home and threw up. She couldn’t help it. Jimmy was gone…and now so was Steve.

 _I told you this would happen_ , she wrote to him in a letter, tears dropping onto the page and crinkling the paper and blurring the ink. _I told you you wouldn’t come home. You PROMISED me you would come home—but you’re not going to. There is no point to this letter because I’m writing to a ghost._ Her hands shook as she wrote. _I don’t even know what to say because I’ll never get to say it again. What use are my words when you’re never going to read them? You told me to write stories. Well, here’s a story for you: You came into my life. You made me love you. And then you broke my heart. And I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t go back. We can’t go back. My brother is dead and you are dead. You…promised…me. Aren’t gentlemen supposed to keep their promises, Steve?_

And then she put her head down on her desk and wept.

Alison didn’t know how she got through the next few months. It felt like a blurry haze. One moment she would feel fine and the next a wave of pain would assault her, knocking her breathless, making her sink to her knees. Memories of Jimmy. Memories of Steve. The boy she grew up with loving and the boy she grew to love. Alison decided she hated men, for taking this selfish route and leaving their loved ones behind to grieve for them. For it was all well and good to die a heroic death—but once you were gone, it was the people who had loved you who now had to be heroes…for as long as they lived. Their battle never ended, unlike those who had died.

She graduated with honors and accepted her place at a local women’s college. She had applied against her mother’s wishes and they had almost had a knockdown fight about, the first real fight Alison would have had with her mother in ages, but her father intervened. It had killed him to see his daughter fade from the bright, popular butterfly she had been before and he saw that the thought of going to college to pursue journalism and English was bringing new life into her—so for the first time in his life, he really stood up against her mother and told her he had had enough of her senseless nonsense. Alison’s mother received the shock of her life when her normally-compliant husband gave her a severe set down and was reasonably subdued for the next few months in regards to Alison. She and Alison would never have a warm, loving relationship but Alison was beyond caring at this point in her life. Some things could never be fixed.

The summer passed and she spent quite a lot of time with Connie. She had become quite close to the girl—in fact, Alison could honestly say Connie was the best friend she had now. The girls had become close after news of Sergeant James Barnes’ death slowly trickled in. He had apparently died around the same time as Steve had, which led Alison to wonder if he and Steve had been on a mission together. She hoped they’d gotten to see each other before they died. When she first heard the news of Bucky’s death, the first person she went in search of was Connie. The girl had been head over heels for Bucky. She had gone to Connie’s house and had seen Connie coming down her front steps. The two girls had stared at each other, both knowing they had both heard the news, and strangely enough, it was _Alison_ who had suddenly burst into tears. The loss of Bucky opened up the wound of losing Steve all over again. One of her last connections to Steve was gone. Now Connie was the only person in the world who had seen her with Steve, who knew how much Steve had meant to her. Connie had wrapped her arms around Alison and wept as well. And the two girls were bonded from that moment on, tied together in their grief but also their efforts to move on and live life. Connie could make Alison laugh when no one else could anymore.

Fall rolled around and she began to attend the local women’s college, focusing on her studies. College was such a different beast than high school—no one really cared about who was popular or not. Alison was well-liked because she was pretty and quiet and smart and, when she was in the mood, very lively. Sometimes a wicked spark would light her eyes and she would say something witty to make the girls laugh or tell an interesting story and they would look at her with admiration—but _real_ admiration. The girls she met in college seemed to like her for more than her looks or her social status, which was a change for Alison but a welcome change.

The year passed and she excelled at college. She continued writing her story about the girl who had been left behind even though she knew the person she was writing it for would never read it. She started a new novel, a slightly darker one about a girl and her mother. She published articles for the college newspaper and won an internship at the local newspaper and reported on things for them. She was a good journalist: she knew how to mix the cold, hard facts with a story-like, warm touch, bringing people and events to life on the page. Her professors told her she had a way with words. They assumed she had been writing her whole life. She didn’t know how to tell them that her talent had lain dormant and unused for most of her life.

Winter came and went, her second Christmas without Jimmy. Thankfully his body had been recovered and they’d gotten a chance to bury him. He received medals for his valor and bravery. Her mother couldn’t bear to look at them so Alison hung them in her room and looked at them when she felt weak inside. Her brother had fought for her so she would keep fighting for his sake. She didn’t have any photos of her Steve before he had taken his super-soldier serums but she clipped out the few photos of him she had found in newspapers from months ago, clad in his Captain America uniform, and kept them in a small folder she kept in her desk. She couldn’t see his full face in his mask but she could see his eyes. She sometimes thought the rest of her life might go on this way: quietly making her way with words, trying to forget about her past, feeling a bit limp inside when she saw couples around, obsessively following the war and shedding a few tears every time there was an Allied victory (which were coming more increasingly; the war still raged on but people were now predicting it might end in a year or two).

But then something changed in the spring of her freshman year at college, near May. She had been strolling in the park near her house, admiring the daffodils and tulips that managed to pop up no matter what was happening in the world, when she had seen something odd: a boy, sitting at a park bench, playing chess…with himself. Her eyebrows rose and she observed him from some distance away because he looked lost in concentration and she didn’t want to disturb him. She’d never played chess before but she had a feeling the game was supposed to have two players. The boy was tall, taller than her, and lanky, with long loose limbs that seemed as if he didn’t quite have proper control of them. He knocked over a chess piece every now and then with his elbows and she hid a smile. He had pale skin and his cheeks were shocks of blotchy pink, as if he were cold or embarrassed, of which she suspected he was neither. He had untidy dark brown hair that was slightly longer and messier than was socially acceptable and it stuck out in every direction as if he had run his hands through his hair and messed it all up. Which, watching him, she could see he _was_ doing; every now and then, he would absentmindedly mess with his hair while frowning in concentration. He wore oversized glasses with black frames. But it was his hands that captured Alison’s hands: they were delicate-looking, with long slender figures…an artist’s hands.

Steve’s hands.

Before she knew what she was doing, she had plunked herself down at the bench opposite him and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to play this game with two people?”

He looked up with shock, startled out of his reverie, and she saw his eyes were a warm brown behind his glasses. He stared at her, open-mouthed, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and she waited with a smile. Finally, realizing that she wasn’t going anywhere or pulling a cruel prank on him, he cleared his throat and said, “Well—yeah, you’re supposed to but no one’s as good as me so I play with myself.” He shrugged. His tone was simple, apologetic. He wasn’t bragging. He was stating a fact.

“How old are you?” she asked, unable to discern. He had a deceptively youthful face, she suspected.

“Twenty-three,” he said. “I was discharged six months ago,” he explained. “Got shot in the side.” He patted his side and winced. “Got a fever and…they thought I was a goner for sure. So they shipped me home. But I made it.” He shrugged. “I was rubbish at the war anyway. Couldn’t fight to save my life. Glad to be home. But I guess I did my part.” He was rambling as if he were afraid Alison would judge him for being home and not fighting—but more and more young men were starting to trickle home now.

“I’d have thought they discharged you for your untidy hair,” Alison joked with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Far too unruly for their strict standards.”

The boy looked at her for a moment and then he let out a sudden, surprised laugh. “My mum likes it long,” he explained. “I don’t care either way.”

“Are you English?” she asked.

“Moved here when I was five,” he said. He didn’t have an accent but he used English slang occasionally.

They looked at each other for a moment and Alison knew he was wondering: what was this strange girl doing, sitting down and asking him, a stranger, such personal questions? But if Steve Rogers had taught her one thing, it was to never fear opening yourself up to a stranger. “Can you teach me to play?” she asked, tapping the chessboard.

He looked shocked. “You’ve never played chess?”

“Never. But there’s a first time for everything, right?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, looking slightly awed and suspicious. He looked at her for a long moment, searching her face, and then he chuckled to himself.

“What’s the joke?” Alison asked.

“Nothing.” Seeing the challenging look in her eyes, he realized she wouldn’t be put off so easily. “It’s just—it’s just I thought you were pranking me at first. Pretty girls like you don’t usually let themselves get caught talking to guys like me.” He spoke without shame or reservations again, simply stating what he saw as a fact of life.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” she said carefully, looking him in his brown eyes, “it’s to never judge a book—or a person—by the cover. You know? Always give people chances because you never know what they might become to you.”

He looked surprised by her words for a moment and then a smile broke across his face. “I like that,” he mused. “I like that a lot. I’m Thomas Powell, Tommy for short.” He held out his hand, which was new because men didn’t usually shake hands with women, but she clasped his hand and smiled and said, “I’m Alison Lynden,” and there they sat for a moment, hands clasped, feeling the warmth of each other’s skin before Tommy Powell began to show her just how to play chess like a master.

Alison felt like she was receiving a new chance to begin again. Perhaps life would always be like this—full of new beginnings and mishaps and missteps… Perhaps grief would always come knocking and try to push her down and maybe she’d even fall and allow herself to lay on the cold ground for a while. But she would always get a chance to pick herself back up, dust herself off, and start all over. And that was all she needed.

 

 

           

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The story isn't quite done yet, so hang in there! As for Tommy, I imagine him to have Eddie Redmayne's impish grin and twinkle. I'm not saying he looks like Eddie Redmayne but Eddie Redmayne's smile and eyes are how I imagine Tommy's to resemble!


	9. Chapter 9

It had been a year since Steve Rogers had woken up from being under the ice and he still had no idea how time passed. Sometimes it seemed to pass in a flash—after all, over seventy years had gone by in what had felt like a simple nap to him—but sometimes it seemed to stretch in achingly slow, bruised moments, floating like a river of molasses and wrapping him up in it until he felt cocooned and trapped. He remembered everything of his past life like it was yesterday—for, for him, it almost _had_ been just yesterday—and he grieved as if it had all just happened…but it also seemed centuries away because all remnants had been wiped away and the world kept subtly reminding him: _We are different now. We are changed. Move on._

He’d had to do a lot of reconciling and learning and adapting and dealing within the first year. He’d been busy. This was why he hadn’t looked up his old friends—or this was what he told himself, anyway. He knew the truth, deep down: he was afraid to look his friends up because then that would really hammer their loss home. They would well and truly be _gone_ once he read about their lives and deaths. There would be no more pretending that they were simply waiting around the corner—he would have to accept that they were gone.

He started with his distant friends, people he knew vaguely: old schoolteachers, some classmates, people in the neighborhood. People he wasn’t as attached to. Perhaps if he could get used to the shock of seeing the words _and passed away on_ or _died on_ … Perhaps it would be easier to see those words for his close friends.

It wasn’t, as it turned out. After acquaintances, he began to look up people he cared about. Bucky’s family members; some of them still survived to this day. He made a plan to go visit them sometime. The friends he had made in the army: Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and the Howling Commandos. Howard Stark was dead. The Commandos were all dead, though some of them had surviving family members. Steve considered visiting them as well. Peggy Carter was still alive in a nursing home. He wanted to visit her—but he was too afraid to look into the lined face of someone he had known. Knowing his friends were dead was hard, but he was afraid it might be harder to actually see the passing of time on the face of one of his friends. He resolved to visit her someday—but not right now. He couldn’t handle it right now.

He didn’t need to look up Bucky. He’d seen him die with his own eyes. He didn’t want to look him up. It was already too much, remembering a lifetime’s worth of memories with Bucky Barnes; he didn’t need to look him up on the Internet and see his face and read his name and feel assaulted all over again with the death of his best friend. _He died decades ago_ , he kept sternly reminding himself. _He’s been at peace for ages. It didn’t just happen._

But it felt like it did. He could still feel the wind tearing at his face, could still hear the howl of the train and his best friend’s scream as he fell out of Steve’s reach and vanished into the abyss.

Steve had nightmares about it for months.

And then there was her—the girl he had been most afraid to look up. The one who meant so much, the one he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what had happened to. What if she hadn’t lived a long, happy life? What if she had been murdered? What if she had been in an unhappy marriage? What if she had forgotten him?

No—she wouldn’t have forgotten him. He knew that.

Alison Lynden.

He wrestled with himself for ages, mechanically going through the motions of working out, pretending to care about what this Nick Fury said to him, pretending to pay attention to SHIELD, spending most of his time alone and lost in thought. He knew all he had to do was look up her name online but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Only when he traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with some representative of something he couldn’t bring himself to remember did he realize he was near the Library of Congress and took a chance, putting on his jacket and hunching his shoulders and walking there. He didn’t know what he was looking for—only that he wanted some answers and was too afraid to look for them himself.

A young man with a very youthful, eager face first helped him. Steve told him who was looking for information on. However, before they could get very far in their search, the boy had given him a squinty-eyed look and Steve had felt a thrill of dread and anticipation his stomach. He knew where this as going; his homecoming had made news, despite SHIELD trying to have kept quiet. Things had leaked out—they always did. People didn’t bother Steve as much these days, nearly thirteen months after he had woken up, but he always encountered this type of person: they recognized him after a few minutes and became too star-struck to act normal anymore. This young man kept gaping at him and stammering things that didn’t make sense. Steve smiled politely and began to step backwards to make his escape, but just then, an elderly man came up and spoke sharply to the young man.

The young man blushed and hurried off, peeking glances at Steve over his shoulder and nearly slamming into a table, and the elderly man sighed and looked at Steve somewhat tiredly. “Please forgive him. He’s new here. What can I help you with?” His tone and gaze were blank and professional. He was old enough to have been a child during the Second World War Steve suspected but he showed no signs of recognizing who Steve was. This was a relief.

“I’m looking for some information on someone named Alison Lynden,” he said.

“Alison Lynden…” the old man said slowly. He had a sweeping pure-white mustache and a small beard as well. “Now…that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Please follow me…this way…” He led Steve over to a reference desk where he began slowly typing at a computer.

“You recognize the name?” Steve asked in surprise. “Why?”

“She wrote some books I recall my mother liking,” the old man responded heavily, eyes trained on the computer screen. Steve noticed his nametag said Ernie Talbot. “Yes, let’s see…Alison Lynden…we do have some information on her as well as some books. Some written by her and one biography. What would you like?”

Steve hesitated. “I’d like to see the books before I go—but could you give me a small overview of her life? She’s just…I just want to know a little bit about her life.”

If Mr. Talbot thought anything strange of this man’s request to know about a woman’s life, a woman who had existed ages ago, he said nothing about it. He cleared his throat and said, “Alright, let’s see…” He rattled off some dates that didn’t mean much to Steve but then got to the part Steve cared about: her life after he had left her. “There isn’t much information on her early years…however we do know that she majored in journalism and English in college and became a writer. She was apparently a very proficient journalist because she was still in college when World War II ended and yet she managed to somehow win the chance to travel overseas with a group of reporters and report on the aftermath of the war. She was one of the first female journalists allowed to see the…” Mr. Talbot squinted at the screen. “What does that say? Oh, yes, _atrocities_ of the war. She reported on the devastation the war had wrought upon Europe and she also reported on the things she saw in the Nazi concentration and death camps. Her articles about the camps were some of the first articles published in American newspapers about them. They caused a tremendous shockwave. Her writing was praised for being empathetic but factual, although she was accused of having an anti-war bias in her writing.

“Nonetheless…she went on to write about a great many topics. She apparently traveled around Europe, Asia, and Africa for three decades, reporting on quite some important events—the aftermath of the war, apartheid, the Vietnam War, and the like. She was given some medals—no, I apologize, some awards for her writing. Nothing like a Pulitzer, but quite an accomplishment during a time when female journalists weren’t given the proper opportunities or attention they deserved, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” Steve said quietly. It _was_ an accomplishment, considering what women were allowed to do and not do back then—but then, he’d always had the feeling that Alison was destined for greatness. He’d seen it in her long before they’d been made project partners. He remembered watching her; people-watching was one of Steve’s hobbies. He loved to observe people, watch their expressions, see them when they thought no one of importance (for Steve was never a Person of Importance) was looking. He had seen façades slip, masks crack. It helped him with his doodles, to see human emotion at its most real. And he’d seen, in that golden-haired mean girl, someone who looked a bit lonely and uncertain—but also vivacious and bright. She sparkled when she told stories and he’d seen the spark in her, thought, _She could do amazing things if she wasn’t so…_

But he’d never really had hope that she would change. She’d been a popular queen bee since primary school, he didn’t expect someone like her to change. And then they’d been made project partners. He’d disliked her initially, despite having been intrigued by her before (and always thinking she was pretty) and they’d gotten off on the wrong foot—but the day she broke down and cried in front of him, something had changed in him. He caught a glimpse of the girl who she really was and he realized she was, in a way, just as trapped by her appearance and preconceived notions of her as _he_ was trapped by his. Something in him had softened and he had allowed himself to become her friend, to open up to her, to trust her—and he hadn’t regretted it even once. She had a sharp, biting tongue but she was also witty, warm, and vulnerable. He liked her immensely.

A part of him was dazzled by her—and even somewhat grateful to her—as well. Despite realizing that she was more than her looks, he couldn’t help but feel slightly amazed that someone as popular and beautiful and glittering as Alison Lynden was choosing to confide in _him_. He hadn’t been star-struck, but in a way…he’d been awed. He couldn’t help it; he didn’t put much stock (or any stock) into things like popularity, but he couldn’t help but feel, at first anyway, like he had made friends with a celebrity or something.

And then he’d gone and fallen in love with her. He’d been shocked by it himself. He’d never fallen in love before. For one thing, he’d never come across a girl he could even imagine himself loving. Oh, there were beautiful film stars to have crushes on (he’d been particularly enamored with Lauren Bacall), but never any _real_ girls to _actually_ love. For another thing, he’d never imagined any girl would give him the time of day, what with him being short and skinny and not likely to live a long, healthy life. So by the time he was partnered up with Alison, he’d all but given up on the abstract concept of love. Honestly, it wasn’t as important as other things in his mind anyway: he’d been solely obsessed by the war and the idea of fighting for his country. That occupied about 98% of his mind most of the time. Love wasn’t something he thought about.

Alison had changed that. He hadn’t expected her too—but she had. She’d been a friend to him and he couldn’t help but fall for her: she was too pretty, too funny, too…magnetic. He liked being around her too much for his feelings to be platonic. Still, he’d never planned on telling her (he didn’t think he could stand the humiliation of being rejected by her) until she’d gone and done the absolute crazy and _kissed_ him. Steve still sometimes felt a tingle of surprise when he thought about it. It was forward, it was daring, and most of all, it was amazing. She had smelled like some type of sweet, flowery scent—cherry blossoms?—and her mouth had been soft. But more than anything, it had been the admission that she _actually liked him_ that had sent Steve through the roof.

It was too bad he’d never gotten to do much with the information. He’d left only a few days after realizing they both felt the same things for each other. He’d thought about her constantly while in Europe but eventually, thoughts of saving Bucky and stopping the Red Skull had driven all other thoughts from his mind. He’d had to focus solely on being the hero after pretending to be one in so many shows as Captain America.

Still—as his plane had crashed into the ice, one of his last conscious thoughts had been a memory of her face.

“She eventually retired from journalism…” Mr. Talbot’s eyes scanned the screen slowly but Steve was in no hurry. “It seems the horrors of what she saw got to her—in her older years, she was a very strong anti-war advocate. A pacifist. She received quite a bit of abuse for it her early years but later on, during the Vietnam era, people praised for it. I remember those days well myself—young peoples’ ideas about war were changing.”

“I’m sure they were,” Steve said. He could believe it; he had changed as well. In fact, he’d almost done a complete one-eighty from what he used to be like. He’d been a child, buying into the idea that fighting in war was heroic and full of glory and honor…and, in a sense, back then it _was_ about that. But things seemed to get muddled as time went on—politics and money and greed began to play more and more of a role in war than actually saving people or fighting for people. Steve was still a soldier now but he didn’t relish the idea of war at all. He could see how people had changed.

“She also wrote a few books,” Mr. Talbot said. “One she wrote at quite a young age—twenty-one. It was a light-hearted book, a light romance novel that bordered on a fairy tale… It was well-received at the time and was popular for a year but made no lasting impression. Nothing of huge literary merit. Five years later she released a book called _In Your Shadow_ which was a darker book about a slightly abusive mother-daughter relationship. It was fiction but…hmmm…looking at this article, it seems some people suspected that Mrs. Lynden—she always published with her maiden name—based the story on her own life. There’s no proof, of course, that she had a bad relationship with her mother but apparently the main character resembled Mrs. Lynden in certain ways…”

Steve knew all too well how poisonous Alison’s mother was. Even now, decades later, his heart squeezed in anger at the thought of the woman who had tormented Alison for so long.

“She then released a book fifteen years later but stated, in the beginning, that she had finished the book a decade ago. She had waited to release it but never quite explained why. This was another fiction book but this one was _very_ heavily speculated to be based on her own life because it matched up with accounts of her life so well. It was about…a young girl who feels trapped by her image but meets someone—a boy; isn’t that always the way?” Mr. Talbot let out a wheezy chuckle and Steve gave a half-hearted smile, mentally urging Mr. Talbot to continue. “This boy apparently…he changed the way she viewed things and showed her how to utilize her true talents and take charge of her life. And the rest of the book details this girl’s perilous path to her future, the obstacles she had to overcome from society and family alike. No one knows if this boy in the book is based on reality, since Alison had no recorded boyfriends as a teenager—though heaven knows there was no proper record being kept of her then anyway—but she _did_ dedicate the book to a Steve.” Mr. Talbot took a deep breath and recited: “ _To Steve: first true friend, first real love; thank you for showing me who I am and who I could be._ No one knows who this Steve is, but people have some theories.” Mr. Talbot’s eyes flicked oh-so-quickly at Steve and then went back to the computer screen but Steve had caught the look: a sharp, almost amused gleam of recognition in the old man’s eyes, just for a moment. Steve hid a surprised smile, folding his arms somewhat self-consciously. So the old man did know.

“Both these fiction books—the second one was called _The One Left Behind_ —were very well-received. Again, no awards, but they both became best-sellers. She first published under the name A. Lynden because female writers still faced obstacles then but then re-published her works in the 80s and 90s under her full name…though most people knew from the start it was the journalist Alison Lynden who had written them. The last book she wrote was in the 80s and it was a non-fiction memoir of her years as a journalist. Very reflective, contemplative of her life and how society changed as she grew up. It’s titled _Now and Then, Then and Now_ and didn’t quite become a best-seller but still sold well. She was”—Mr. Talbot took off his glasses to polish them; Steve suspected this was for dramatic effect, to look more like a storyteller—“never as famous as, say, people like Edward R. Murrow, but she certainly did make a name for herself. Back then, at least, anyway. People now don’t know her as well but history buffs certainly would. She was at least that notable.”

Steve’s heart filled with pride for a moment and then something Mr. Talbot said struck him. “You said she used her maiden name to publish? Was she married?”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Talbot said, returning to the computer screen. Steve’s heart sank; he knew it was selfish and stupid of him—of _course_ she’d gotten married, what man wouldn’t want to be with her? And besides, he was glad she’d gotten to live a life and move on and be happy…but a part of him still ached at the fact that he had lost her. He’d found her but then she’d slipped through his fingers and grown up and lived a life. She’d loved a man, had walked down the aisle, had said “I do” to someone—it just hadn’t been Steve.

“She married a Mr. Thomas Powell,” he said. “Not much information on him, he wasn’t exactly famous like Alison was—although he _was_ a notable chess player. Played in some tournaments and won some medals. Nothing global or even national; just statewide. But he was a salesman. Made an honest living. By all accounts of him, he was a mild-mannered, even-tempered man who was very easy-going. Loved reading. It seems like he and Alison had a happy marriage; she spends a few chapters in her memoir reflecting on the marriage and she seemed content and happy with him. They had children as well, two boys and one girl. One of the sons passed from cancer in the 80s but her other remaining children survive her.”

Steve swallowed and tried to look disinterested and not heartbroken. He’d known this was a possibility but he still didn’t like hearing it. “So she…she died, then?”

Mr. Talbot seemed to realize he was saying something that was upsetting to Steve because his tone became a fraction gentler and he said, “Yes, young man, she did. She died eight years ago, in fact. Nothing in specific, just age-related health problems.”

“She was happy?” Steve asked anxiously, unaware that this was a strange question to be asking a librarian who was simply giving facts about a person. He seemed to have forgotten where he was, so lost was in he in memories of Alison: opening the door on her crying face, sitting with her in his house and telling her about his parents and Bucky, mischievously dragging her away from that nosy neighbor…kissing her three times in one day…

However, Mr. Talbot gave no indication that he was aware Steve had asked a rather personal question. He merely gave Steve a searching look and quietly said, “It appears so, yes. She died surrounded by family and loved ones, so I think we can assume she died a peaceful death and lived a full life.”

Steve didn’t know what to say after that. He had so many questions he wanted to ask—what had attracted Alison to her future husband? Had her relationship with her mother ever improved? Why had she named her children whatever she had named them? Did she think about Steve often?—but none of these were questions that anyone but Alison could answer…and she was gone.

He did realize there was one more question he could ask, however. “Real quick,” he said. “Jimmy Lynden, Alison’s older brother—can you tell me what happened to him?”

“Ah, yes, give me one moment…” Mr. Talbot typed a few things on the keyboard and clicked the mouse a few times and then straightened his glasses, peering intently at the screen. “Jimmy Lynden, yes, he…he was a soldier in World War II and he…it seems he died in action, only a few months before y—” The old man broke off guiltily, his weathered and lined face coloring slightly.

Steve pretended not to notice. So Jimmy had ended up dying in action after all… _My God, that must have broken Alison…_ and still she had gone on to do great things and become a great woman. Steve felt another sudden rush of pride and affection for her. _My girl. Good job, Alison. Well done._

“Did you need anything else, young man?” Mr. Talbot asked.

“No, that was all,” Steve said. “I _would_ like to write down the names of all the books she wrote, actually.” He pulled out a small notepad and a wooden pencil and Mr. Talbot didn’t seem surprised at all to see Steve using an old-fashioned notepad instead of the Notes app on a smart phone. Well, considering he knew who Steve was, it made sense that he wouldn’t be surprised. He carefully jotted down the names of all of her books, planning on buying them right away and reading through them slowly and carefully, and then he was done. He put his notepad away and shook Mr. Talbot’s hand, saying, “Thank you, sir, you’ve been a big help. I’m sorry for taking your time up like this.”

“Not a problem, young man,” Mr. Talbot said. He had been distant and professional in the beginning but now that Steve was leaving, his tone seemed a bit sentimental. “Oh, and if I may, young man?” Steve looked back up at him and Mr. Talbot took a deep breath. “She was…she seems like someone to be very proud of. An extraordinary woman, wouldn’t you say so? I’m sure the people who loved…love…her are very proud.”

Steve gave a rather crooked smile and said slowly, “I’d say…I agree with you, sir. I think we’re very proud of her.” Then he gave a small wave and headed outside, hands in his pockets. He felt bittersweet and slightly somber but as he stepped outside, the sun broke through the blanketed clouds in the autumn sky and he stood there for a moment, looking up at the sun, and then he smiled.

_Thank you for showing me who I am and who I could be…_

_No_ , he thought, looking out at the sky wistfully, _thank you for giving me the chance to do so. It was an honor knowing you._ He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the feel of her against him and her scent, her smile and gleaming golden hair and sky blue eyes—and then he shook his head, smiled, and headed off down the street, whistling a sweet, semi-sorrowful tune.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Story time for how Odd Pieces came about. I was at the bookstore looking at historical fiction novels about World War II. The books were all interesting…but nothing was clicking. It was like I was looking for something that wasn’t there. And then I realized: I subconsciously had been looking for a story about Steve Rogers. This, of course, wasn’t going to happen; there are no novels written about Steve Rogers. So I set out to write the Steve Rogers story I felt like reading about. 
> 
> Writing this story broke my heart. I wish I could have made Steve come home from the war as a hero, marry Alison, and spend the rest of his life with her…but then he wouldn’t be the Steve Rogers we know and the story wouldn’t be true. So I wrote a love story that seemed realistic to me. I won’t be revisiting this specific couple again because Alison and Steve’s story has been told and I hope whoever read this story liked it! I know I loved writing it.


End file.
